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The Current Transcript for May 30, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

[Music: Theme]

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

SOUNDCLIP

The city really came together. Suicide rates went down for a while. After 9/11, we were all sort of one tribe and we took care of one another. Murder rates went down, violent crime went down.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Intuitively, we know this; the very thing that can tear people apart can also bring them together. But when Sebastian Junger took a closer look at the effects of trauma on individuals such as civilians, and disaster, and groups such as soldiers and war, he found that a sense of being in something and confronting it together made a difference. Hear his ideas on the importance of the so-called tribe and it's important on homecoming and belonging in half an hour. And we've seen that generosity of spirit and coming together in disaster in real time as that massive forest fire swept through Fort McMurray. This week there's an opportunity for a lot of residents to go back.

SOUNDCLIP

We've heard a lot of people talking. They don't know what's happening. You know a lot of them are thinking they want to go and see what they're faced with.

AMT: But going back will have its own challenges and the mayor is already telling people to be prepared to see drastic change in their city and in their neighbourhoods. We'll hear from Mayor Melissa Blake in just over an hour. Early this morning, the Ontario Premier and other officials attended a sunrise ceremony led by Aboriginal leaders, an event to usher in Ontario's official response today to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But even as that is happening, the crisis that caught the nation's attention over health for Indigenous youth suffering depression, facing suicide risk, that crisis continues in many remote communities. Today we introduce you to one doctor who's trying to make a difference. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

Community psychiatrist speaks to failures in care for remote communities

Guests: Dr. Elena Shurshilova

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: People on the remote First Nation of Attawapiskat say this spate of suicide attempts started last October with the death of a 13-year-old girl. They say since then dozens of the community's 1800 people have attempted suicide, culminating in 11 attempts in one night last week.

VOICE 2: Last weekend in this graveyard, a 14-year-old girl was laid to rest on what should have been her 15th birthday. Poverty, substance abuse, poor housing are just the start of the list here. Cross Lake is not alone.

VOICE 3: Police say the shooter killed people at two locations. In all, they confirm five dead, two critically injured. This screen grab of a Facebook group chat may tell part of the story. Residents from La Loche say it was the gunman's warning: I’m done with life, just killed two people, about to shoot up the school.

AMT: From the deadly school shooting in La Loche, Saskatchewan to states of emergency in Pimicikamak, Manitoba and Attawapiskat, Northern Ontario, too many times already this year crisis situations in First Nations communities have boiled over into tragedy and into headlines. Each time, the rest of the country is left asking how this could happen but my first guest today is one of the few people who keeps flying into communities such as these and putting in the work to try to improve life and bring hope long after the crises fade from the daily news coverage. Dr. Elena Shurshilova lives in Ottawa. She oversees some 500 patients of all ages, including those with developmental disabilities, and those in group homes. Some live in remote First Nations communities where she flies in regularly to provide care. Last week one of her patients in particular was urgently referred to her. He is 16-years-old, he has Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and psychosis. He was in imminent danger of slipping through the cracks. Dr. Elena Shurshilova is in our Ottawa studio, hello.

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: Hello.

AMT: First of all, can you tell us what happened to that 16-year-old patient who was referred to you.

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: Well, first of all, I want to thank you for having me on your show and I also want to mention that the youth that we are speaking about is aware of his story being broadcast, and is pleased about this. The youth that I want to speak about, is 16-years old from Whitedog community. He was unfortunately exposed to the suicide of his mother at the age of seven and between 7-and 14- years of age, he attempted suicide twice. He encountered 30 different placements across the province, most of them in Northern Ontario. His most stable significant timeline was between 2003 and 2012 when he was under the care of his grandparents. In 2014, he was at the Bayfield Treatment Centre where during nine months of his stay, and the great care of his psychiatrist, he improved by 75 percent in terms of severity, intensity, frequency, suicidal ideations, suicide attempts, and running away behaviours.

AMT: Because he was under regular care?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: Yes.

AMT: And you were called in just last week?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: I was called last week as their last placement in Bayfield was no longer in place. He was placed with Youth Residential Services and one of the group homes where he was placed, called Pineridge, it’s close to Belleville, so I was asked to see him on May 18^th, urgently. The concern brought up by staff included the youth not being able to sleep at night, staring out the window, scratching the window, saying that he hears voices, he sees people in distress saying that voices tell him to kill himself.

AMT: Is this what you call psychosis?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: Yes, when people lose touch with reality and start hearing voices in their head or hearing voices outside the head, it really is significant as the presence of psychosis, especially when this involves people making commentary or causing hallucinations of command.

AMT: Commanding them to do something.

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: Yes.

AMT: You had him admitted to hospital, am I correct?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: No, I assessed him May 18^th, where we agreed to have a safe plan. At this point, he agreed to start the medications including anti-psychotics and a mood stabilizer. However, he continued to run away. The other challenge was that as a youth in Aboriginal Child Services, there was a need for a second psychiatrist to approve the treatment in order for that to go forward. As such, the youth was irritated to the point he was taken to Campbellford Hospital when it was discovered by the group home staff that he had numerous cuts on his hands. While in Campbellford hospital, he voiced suicidal ideations, he was transferred to Peterbourough Hospital.

AMT: At the Peterborough hospital, what happened to him? How was he treated?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: Well, that is the concern that I would like to bring forward for all to know. When he was he was assessed in hospital right after he was admitted to a crisis unit, nurses informed group home staff and eventually myself, that he ran away. He overdosed again on cough and cold medications. He has a repetitive tendency to overdose on those medications His mother committed suicide by overdosing on cough and cold syrup—

AMT: And he saw that?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: He was in the proximity. It was when he was in her care, so I'm not particularly sure if he saw it.

AMT: He was seven at the time.

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: That's right. He was assessed, as I mentioned, he ran away from the hospital, he was intoxicated and had psychotic symptoms like slurred speech, not behaving himself and he was placed on the observation unit. I had the pleasure to speak to his psychiatrist who assured me that he will be treated there for at least three days, because he was on the form, but the next day we received a call from the legal manager of the unit saying that he will be discharged as those are chronic issues per se, and there is no other disorder or psychosis that had been observed. I urged the therapeutic team to seek for more collateral information, including previous medical records, previous psychiatric records, and subsequently, I faxed them the information that was available to me including his medical records from Bayfield—

AMT: Right. I need you to move forward, I’m sorry. What happened to him at the hospital?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: I heard from the staff and I received this email quote unquote about the treatment. So the nurse who served him a lunch, and quote, unquote “opened the door and did not give the youth enough time to move his leg, thus squishing his leg between the door and the wall”.

AMT: He was sitting on the floor behind the door.

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: The nurse did not even acknowledge our existence, or even looked at us. She said the tray of food in the middle of the floor then walked back out of the room.

AMT: This has really bothered you. You're quite angry about this, what does this say to you?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: I feel that messages like that from professional teams reinforces the message that was received by this youth; the message that we carry to this youth is that he life is not worth anything; that his life does not have value. If his life does not have value, and this message gets reinforced, that means he will think that anyone else’s life is not worth value. That is what I see when suicide and homicide occur.

AMT: Is this specific incident that you talk about emblematic of something? Is it a one-off? Had it happened to him before?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: If it would have been a one-off, I would probably not be coming to this show. Unfortunately, in three years of me flying north, serving the population of northern communities, this is a rather classic story and one of the stories that I hear on a daily basis when I serve this population.

AMT: Well, we did contact the hospital. You're talking about the Peterborough Regional Health Centre, and we asked an official there to respond. We received a statement from Scott Pappen, the Integrated Regional Director of mental health. He says they cannot discuss specific patients, but his statement reads and I'm quoting, “We also make it a priority to ensure the care we provide is culturally appropriate and safe for our patients who come to us from a diverse range of cultural and socio economic backgrounds. Before receiving the CBC's request for comment, the hospital has not been made aware of any complaint regarding care provided to a patient from the crisis unit. We have launched an investigation and will take appropriate action if we identify ways to improve patient care or any conduct that contravenes the hospital's policies and procedures”. That's the end of the quote. Dr. Elena Shurshilova, what do you make of that response?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: Well, it's somewhat surprising to me to hear about the cultural approach because I had the owners review some medical records from this hospital being authorized by social services of this child, and I found this one report particularly interesting. It was described as being odd, the fact that a child could not be treated on the signature of one psychiatrist. They were not familiar with the policy of Aboriginal youth in the care, which requires two physicians in order to start treatment. That is already a surprise to me, along with the fact that the cultural formulation of the interview was not done by the patient, he wasn't of been allowed to have a cultural broker with him, and so forth.

AMT: Why is a cultural broker important?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: Aboriginal youth, First Nation youth is a very vulnerable population. When that you speak to youth, they have a pre-determined mistrust, historical mistrust toward health care providers, especially that do not belong to their culture. So, if they do not feel that you can relate to them on their terms, they will not provide you information essentially necessary to determine a safe plan and safe treatment.

AMT: Now this specific patient has been moved to another hospital, correct?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: That is correct.

AMT: Okay, but you are saying that this is emblematic of what you see on a wider scale.

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: Yes, unfortunately it is so. I do see the suffering that First Nation youth encounters from the system. When they are handled by service providers, is more than suffering of just children of Aboriginal origin being in the room and the hospitals and seeing the service health service providers.

AMT: Can you give me an idea of where you travel to? I understand you travel into various parts of northern Canada, not only Ontario.

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: I travel to northern Saskatchewan. When I was in my residency in Saskatchewan, I was interested in the cultural psychiatry and I was nurtured and supported by my program and I piloted an elective in cultural psychiatry. I traveled thousands of kilometres away from Saskatoon, communities such as Stony Rapids, La Roche, and later to Fond-du-Lac.

AMT: Who pays for that?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: I for my ticket to Saskatoon and from there on, my ticket is paid by North medical services.

AMT: So if you wouldn't fly yourself there, you wouldn’t be able to go?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: [sighs] I'm afraid not.

AMT: It clearly means a lot to you to go to see these patients.

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: Yes, on this note I must say that I am fortunate know that I have another psychiatrist that is interested to continue with my clinics, so if everything follows well, then hopefully she will inherit my clinics. I will be hopefully wrapping up my three year assignment, my commitment.

AMT: But when you fly into these places, what's it like? How long do you stay? What’s your day like?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: It is very difficult. We fly the small Cessna planes. One way is maybe three hours. It depends on the weather conditions. One way will take as much as three hours if you fly from Stony Rapids, and three hours back. On the way we have to sometimes land and refuel, sometimes the weather conditions will not allow us to travel. I must say that, when I arrive in Stony Rapids, my patients also travel by planes from where they are. They fly in from other communities like Fond-du-Lac.

AMT: To see you.

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: Yes.

AMT: And then they wait how long?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: Well, we have one day together and I have to see them that day. If the weather worsens, then I have to leave a little bit earlier, so it is pretty challenging.

AMT: We hear in all of our news stories about the crises in Northern communities, especially amongst Indigenous people. We keep hearing that there's not enough psychiatric care. How many other psychiatrists are doing what you do?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: I'm not aware of psychiatrists flying in to Saskatchewan, so I cannot comment on that. I have to say that psychiatric services are very, very small.

AMT: And what do you want to see change? What could make that better?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: Well, I only can have my idea, however my hope is that all of us think about what could be changed in order to improve the situation. My idea, when I think about the change includes a resuscitation of an Aboriginal healing foundation that was shut down because government decided not to provide any funding despite many warnings from many different politicians. I recall the plea of Dennis Bennington, he was M.P. of Northwest Territories, and warned about the dangers and consequences of that. The findings since then were transferred to Health Canada and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation that actually published many important projects, works, and funded many fantastic healing projects, community based projects with good outcomes.

AMT: Are you saying that community based projects are what you need because if you're flying in, how often?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: Well, every three months, which is not enough.

AMT: In the case of the first patient we were talking about, if there are others with parallel issues, that's not enough.

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: Yes, it is not.

AMT: When we hear the word resources, you're talking about maybe putting funding into actual community based mental health?

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: Yes, directly to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. Many health care workers, aboriginal based mental health workers, reflect on the huge loss that the country encountered when that foundation was closed.

AMT: It's important to hear your voice in all of this, thank you for speaking with me today.

ELENA SHURSHILOVA: My pleasure.

AMT: That is Dr. Elena Shurshilova, she is a psychiatrist. She joined us from our Ottawa studio. We also sought comment today from the Health Minister, Jane Philpott, the Federal Health Minister, and the Federal Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, Carolyn Bennett. Neither was available. Let us know what you think as you listen to what she had to say about the challenges faced-- that she faces. You can tweet us, we're @thecurrentcbc. You can go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the Contact link. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current. Thanks for listening.

[Music: sting]

War reporter Sebastian Junger on why peace can be more traumatic for vets than war

Guest: Sebastian Junger

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, residents of Fort McMurray are slated to begin re-entering the city this week, but the Mayor Melissa Blake says there's still an awful lot of work to be done. She's my guest, in half an hour. But first, finding peace in war and war in peace.

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VOICE 1: You're going back in?

[Music: Emotional]

VOICE 2: There's still men out there. When I go home, people ask me, "Hey Hoot, why do you do it, man? Why? You just some kind of war junkie?" I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand it's about the man next to you, and that's it.

AMT: Well, the sounds of a scene from the movie Black Hawk Down which tells the true story of a group of U.S. army rangers fighting to stay alive in war-torn Somalia in 1993. Eventually, 19 American soldiers and hundreds of Somali fighters would die in that battle. Sebastian Junger has studied what happens to men and women in times of war and in peace; and not solely soldiers, but societies. His findings may surprise. Sebastian Junger is a former war correspondent and a bestselling author whose books include The Perfect Storm. He has just published a new book called Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging. And Sebastian Junger joins me from New York City. Hello.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Hi there.

AMT: How true is what that soldier said about why soldiers fight?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: I mean, in my experience with American soldiers, it's absolutely 100 per cent true. I mean, there's a variety of motivations for joining the military. Once you've joined, there's a variety of motivations for making sure you're in a combat unit- it's actually quite hard to get into the combat units and the guys that are in those units almost exclusively without exception want to be- but once you're out there fighting, it's not about patriotism or the flag, it really is about the men around you. I keep saying men because it was all men in the unit that I was with.

AMT: Were the Somalis who were fighting against the Americans more cohesive because they were fighting in their streets and near their homes?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: I imagine they were. I looked at as study in Israel that measured P.T.S.D., post-traumatic stress disorder, and one of the conclusions was that the closer you're fighting to your home, the more sort of intuitive moral sense it makes. And the moral justice sort of tends to diminish the psychological trauma of war.

AMT: You write that for some soldiers, their time in combat is the best time of their life. Why?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: What we want as humans, what we're programmed to want from two million years of evolution, is closeness with other humans. And one of the ironies of modern society is that as we get wealthier, we also get further apart from each other. Wealth enables us to make individualistic decisions. We can move out of our neighborhood that we grew up in; a lot of people in the world can't do that. We can live by ourselves in an apartment building; most of the world definitely cannot do that. We can move to California far away from our parents and our siblings. It's all wonderful in one way, in a lot of ways, but it does end up separating people from their- well, I'll say it, from their tribe. And so that has real emotional consequences. That alienation is actually extremely hard on the human psyche. And so what I've looked at is what triggers a closeness, right? So if you send men off to war in a platoon, they get very, very close. And as a result, they actually find that is always they're a lot happier, even though they're in a war zone. And then they come back to modern society, and suddenly, they're alone again. And the irony is that even though they're safer, emotionally, they feel like they're in danger because they're by themselves.

AMT: Mmm. Well, you tell the story about early Americans who joined or were taken prisoner during battles by native warriors. What happened to many of them once they started living in native societies?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Well, yeah. Benjamin Franklin, a well-known writer and thinker in the early years of the United States, he wrote a letter to a friend and he commented on this phenomenon that a lot of people knew about, and were frankly sort of unsettled by. And the phenomenon was this: that white people, settlers, along the frontier in the eastern seaboard of the United States, as Franklin said, thousands of them have run off to join the Indian tribes. And he said, we have not one example of an Indian who fled to civilization to become civilized. And, you know, for an upright Christian society with a superiority complex, it didn't make sense. Like, why would you write off the join what he termed "the savages?"

AMT: And why would they? What were the native societies offering that the others didn't have?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Really, what they're offering was equality. It was egalitarianism within their society. It was not a society of great wealth differential, you were sort of judged on your own merits. And these were societies mostly that lived in manageably small groups that were very connected. They were really cohesive, intimate societies, which is what over two million years, what humans have evolved for.

AMT: And you think that yearning for tribal existence is still with us?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: I mean, everything- yes. Everything that we evolved to be over two million years is still with us. That's right. And one of the most powerful impulses that humans have, in fact, the thing that makes us humans as we understand the word, is that impulse towards communal connection. And one thing that's sort of interesting is that if you take Western society and you collapse it, you give it a calamity, what immediately happens is that people leave their sort of individualistic mindset and they band together in a very, very natural way. You don't get mayhem; you get the opposite of mayhem. You get more cohesion then you have when things are stable and peaceful. In the blitz in London, 30,000 Londoners were killed by German bombs. It could have been absolute mayhem; the British Government was prepared for that. And in fact, it was the opposite, and people were sleeping shoulder to shoulder in the tube stations. And later, many civilians said that they actually missed the war. And what they missed was the sense that they all belong to this group that was struggling to survive. You know, one woman said that really struck me, she said, you know, we would have all gone down to the beaches with broken bottles to fight the Germans if we'd had to. And that feels good to people for some very ancient reasons.

AMT: It's interesting how it's so counterintuitive, and we still today think that societies in the midst of war suffer more depression and neuroses, but that's not what you found.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Yeah, there was one official in London who said, it's amazing, we have neurotics driving ambulances. And he was talking about this strange phenomenon: the government was prepared for mass psychiatric casualties- in addition to the physical casualties, of course, there are many of those- but mass psychiatric casualties. But what happened was when the bombing started, admissions to psychiatric wards went down in London, and then they went back up when the bombing stopped. And you see that over and over again in modern societies that have faced some sort of calamity: there is an improvement in overall mental health. I found one study in Ireland during 1969-1970, the terrible time of riots, The Troubles, as they were called, and violence in the streets. And this one Irish psychologist who had access to public health data found that he was able to track depression rates in the population, and he found that as the violence increased, the levels of depression decreased. The only county in Northern Ireland that suffered a rise in depression was County Derry that saw no violence at all. The worse the violence, the better people felt. And of course, it's not that people like violence, but the calamity of it all forced people to band together and that coming together by people in modern society feels incredibly good and it buffers people against their psychological demons.

AMT: Well, you looked at New York City after 9/11, and you found parallels. Tell us what you found.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Yeah, I live in New York, and on 9/11, of course, we suffered 3,000 civilian deaths in the collapse of the- almost 3,000 deaths in the collapse of the World Trade Centers. And afterwards, I mean, the whole population of the city was significantly traumatized by that, but again, what you got from that trauma was not dysfunction: the city really came together, and so suicide rates went down. You'd think trauma would tip some people over the edge who were contemplating suicide and they'd step over that line. It was the opposite, it brought people back. And the feeling was, well, I'm needed. My city needs me, my people need me. I can't, I have to step up and help like everyone else is. And I remember there was this incredible sort of mood on the street where you would sort of, if you saw someone standing on a corner who looked distraught- and there are a lot of people who looked distraught- you know, you might say to them, hey, man, are you all right? How are you doing? That wouldn't happen now, but for a while after 9/11, we were all sort of one tribe and we took care of one another. Murder rates went down, violent crime went down for a while. Even Vietnam vets who had suffered from P.T.S.D. from Vietnam said that their symptoms improved after 9/11 because they felt they were needed.

AMT: You were in Afghanistan with the Northern Alliance just before 9/11. Tell us about the combat you saw.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Yeah, I was in Badakhshan in Northern Afghanistan in the fall of 2000. I was with Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance. You know, back then, the Taliban had fighter planes, they had tanks, they had an air force. I mean, they were fully equipped, and Massoud was completely outgunned. And so we really got hammered a couple of times and saw some very, very tough things. Things I'd never seen before. And I came back to the to the United States and New York thinking sort of typical, right, I was like, you know, nothing affects me. I just had this idea that nothing affected me, right? And a lot of people do. And one day, I went down to take the subway underground, and I had this massive panic attack. And I had never had a panic attack before. Everything looked like a threat. And I didn't know the term P.T.S.D., because U.S. wasn't at war yet, right? And the train was going too fast, and I felt it was going to leap the tracks and kill me somehow. And there was a lot of people down there, and I thought the mob was going to turn on me and beat me to death. I mean, the lights were too bright. Everything felt like a threat and I couldn't take it, I ran out of there. And for a while, for a few weeks, a few months, I would have panic attacks in small places, basically places that were overwhelming, where I wasn't in control. And I later found out that that was P.T.S.D. At the time, I just thought I was going crazy.

AMT: Hmm. What did you find out about how P.T.S.D. affects armies around the world?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Well, it affects armies like it affects everybody. I mean, if a person has been traumatized, either by a threat to their life or by witnessing the death or suffering of other people. Actually, witnessing harm to others is more traumatic, can be more traumatic than danger to oneself. It says something very interesting and I think positive about the human race. But anyway, if you've had a trauma like that, it could be a car accident, it could be combat, or a violent assault, whatever it is- you don't have to be a soldier for this- you initially react in sort of adaptive ways that help you survive. It's called short term acute P.T.S.D. So for a while, you'll jump at sudden noises. If your life's been in danger, you want to be alert, you want to be reactive to unexpected noises. You have trouble sleeping, you sleep very lightly, you don't want to be surprised. This is evolution talking, right? You don't want to be surprised in your sleep by whatever the danger is. You have nightmares about the thing that could kill you, to sort of remind you of like what the threat that's out there. All mammals respond in this way, and obviously humans do. But for most people, I mean, it's adaptive, it's a survival thing, and after a few weeks or few months, and it dissipates, like it did for me. Some people get stuck in a kind of a rut, a trauma rut, and at that point, it's not adaptive, it does not help you survive, it actually is destructive. And that's long term chronic P.T.S.D. The rate, the percentage of people who've been traumatized that get long term P.T.S.D., is dependent on, usually around 20 per cent, but it's a function, you know, I realized as I was writing my book, it's really a function of a couple of things. It reflects trauma in one's childhood. So if you were traumatized as a child, if you were sexually abused or violently abused, or even if a parent died, or anything like that. That predisposes you to long term P.T.S.D.; actually, it makes you psychologically vulnerable.

AMT: Okay, but because you were saying, P.T.S.D. in Israel is lower amongst soldiers.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Yes, it is. And the other thing that really seems to affect it is the level of support you get when you come home. So all people react to trauma in the near term in a sort of survival way, but afterwards, people with childhood trauma tend to get long term P.T.S.D. and people who return to low levels of social support get long term P.T.S.D. So if you if you traumatize a rat- and this applies to rats as well as humans- if you traumatize a rat and put it in a cage by itself, it's traumatic reactions will continue almost indefinitely. If you take that rat, traumatize it, and put it with its fellow rats in a society, within a week is more or less normal. So what you have with people in modern societies is that they're being traumatized in war and then they're coming back, not to a tribal environment that's close and cohesive and comforting, but to their air conditioned apartment in their suburb or whatever. And those are people- that makes people very, very vulnerable to never recovering from the trauma. There are countries, modern countries like Israel, that actually, even though they're modern countries, are so cohesive and sort of tribal, that the levels of P.T.S.D. are quite low. And Israel has a P.T.S.D. rate of one per cent; in this country and the U.S. military, it's around 20 per cent.

AMT: And let's talk about the U.S. Is there correlation between the amount of combat and carnage a combatant sees and P.T.S.D.?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Yes, I mean the more-- yes. The more you're traumatized, the more likely you are to have P.T.S.D. and the worse it will be.

AMT: And yet, you discovered that the percentage of American soldiers who are actually combatants, frontline combatants, versus the percentage on P.T.S.D. disability is different.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Yeah, this is where it gets complicated and has to be figured out. So around 10 per cent of the U.S. military, it's typical for a modern army, around 10 percent of the U.S. military is actually engaged in combat. They're shooting their weapons, they're getting shot at, they're seeing people killed around them. Very, very traumatic. But it's only around 10 per cent of the military; the other 90 are in support roles. Maybe occasionally some of those people are in danger or witness something disturbing, but it's pretty rare. But around 50 percent, 5-0, around 50 per cent of the U.S. military has applied for some form of P.T.S.D. disability from the government. So that's forty percent in there that you need some explaining, right, as they were traumatized, but they come home to this country and they feel psychologically precarious. They feel vulnerable; they feel like they can't fully function in society. And I should add that the same phenomenon can be found in the Peace Corps. Peace Corps volunteers are generally not traumatized overseas. They're living in small communities in developing countries in a very intimate sort of traditional way that would be undoubtedly new for them as a member of the Western world, and then they come back to the sort of wonderful affluent Western society that is very individualistic. And many of them go into depression, and which is what happens to soldiers, so it's possible that these large numbers of people that feel that they're suffering from long term P.T.S.D., they're actually, you know, P.T.S.D. is the word that we have, but it actually might be more a kind of transition disorder. They may be noticing the alienation of Western society in a way that we don't, we, collectively, the civilian population, because we don't have a comparison for it. Soldiers have spent a year or more deployed in a platoon of 30, 40, 50 people, sleeping together shoulder to shoulder, eating meals together, tasks and missions together. It's a tribal--

AMT: In a tribe. Yeah.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Yeah, in a tribe. It's exactly, it duplicates our evolutionary past very, very closely. So they can make a comparison with Western society, and the comparison doesn't make Western society look very inviting.

AMT: Well, in fact, you write: "Today's veterans often come home to find that although they're willing to die for their country, they're not sure how to live for it."

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Yeah, that's right.

AMT: Tell us more about what you're thinking there, what you're saying.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Well, I mean, they're in an environment where dedication to the group is the most important value. That your individual concerns sort of disappear into the group concerns, which of course is how we evolved to live as a species, we're a social species. There was no individual survival outside of group survival. I mean, it was one and the same thing. And then they come back to this country, and I'm referring to United States right now, and find the country very, very divided: divided racially, economically, and now it's very divided politically. And I think soldiers, I mean, I can't speak for them, but the sense that I get is they're like, look, we fought for this country and we fought and ignored every demographic difference in the platoon: white, black, rich, poor, gay, straight, doesn't matter. You're out there fighting in that platoon, there's no distinctions are being made of that sort. And now here we are, we're coming back, and we fought for a country that we now realize is fighting itself. And that must be incredibly demoralizing to veterans. To see the sort of body politics sort of cleave itself in half, to see the society dividing itself and in dispute with itself. And I mean, I don't have studies to back this up, but my hunch from talking to veterans is that that actually adds considerably to their trauma and to their sense of, you know, what was all that was the sacrifice for? Look what we came home to.

AMT: You know, you talk about that re-entry, there's that amazing scene that I always remember from the movie The Hurt Locker. He's a sapper, he's detonating and dismantling bombs in Iraq. And incredible stress, incredible violence. And then he comes home and his wife sends him to the store and it's this shot: he's standing in the grocery aisle looking at cereal. He's surrounded by cereal boxes and he doesn't know what to do.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: And you know, that's not-- yeah, that's right. But that's not that's not uniquely a military, a soldier situation. I mean, anyone who's traveled in the developing world for any length of time, anyone has been in the Peace Corps, comes back to Western society and is just overwhelmed by the almost obscene wealth. I mean, it really--

AMT: Yeah, and the choices that are mundane choices versus the choices that are life and death.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: That's right, that's right.

AMT: Well, I want to ask you a little bit about yourself in this, because I follow your work and I know you have gone through some of this, as well. You have stepped away from war correspondence, you lost a very close friend, photographer Tim Hetherington. You worked in the field with him. And you then wrote about stepping away from doing that kind of work. What was re-entry like for you?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Well, you know, the assignments that I would take would last a couple weeks, a month, a couple of months. So I was sort of re-entering over and over again. And when I stopped war reporting, it was a decision. And I hadn't actually been shot at in a couple of years when I made that decision, so I was already-- I'd already sort of unhooked from that mindset a little bit. And then Tim Hetherington, my brother and colleague and friend, was killed in Libya on an assignment that I was supposed to be on and at the last minute I couldn't go, and he got killed. And I felt incredibly guilty and that I if I'd been there, I could've saved him, or even that should have been me, not him. I mean, very complicated reactions to it. But I stopped I stopped war reporting, and the next thing that I did was this book Tribe. And you know, in some sense it's a study of how people react to society when they come home from war, and you know, people been writing about that for a long time. I mean, that's what The Odyssey is about, this return. I mean, war is tough; but the return from war, that's the real struggle. I mean, you see this in account after account. You can figure out how to fight a war, psychologically, you can figure out how to survive a war. What a lot of people do not figure out is how to survive coming home. And so I thought I would write about that, and I thought, you know, I don't want to be pigeonholed as like a military writer. That does not interest me. What interests me is what the experience of war says about us, about all of us in society, and that was the real focus of my book.

AMT: Well, and as a journalist, you have a tribe as well, especially in a war zone.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Yes, and I should say, the word tribe is a lovely word, or it can be. The literal meaning of it, the ancient meaning of it, are people that you live with that you share resources with, that you share defense with, that you would risk your life for, which is sort of temporarily true of journalists while they're in war zones. It's a low-- using the word tribe for journalists is a little bit of a metaphor, but it's a useful one. I think that people respond to the idea of tribalness in sports teams, in journalists, and what have you, any number of things. Even though technically they're not tribes, people use that word and those situations are appealing because we don't have tribal structures in our society. I mean, the reason that those that that idea is an appealing one is because it's actually something we lack.

AMT: If you're just joining us, I've been speaking today with Sebastian Junger, long-time war correspondent – no longer war corresponding. He’s the bestselling author whose books include The Perfect Storm. We've been discussing ideas in his new book called, which is called Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging. It's all about soldiers and societies at war and at peace. We've been talking about how individuals and societies fare in war and in peacetime, as well as his look at and experience with PTSD. If you missed the first part of our conversation, you can find it on our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent or on the CBC Radio App. Sebastian Junger is in New York City. Now, Sebastian, I want to pick up on this idea of people's actions being motivated by their need to belong to the tribe. You write about a number of disasters, away from war, which show how tribal instincts kick in and you include a very Canadian situation. I have a clip from that from the CBC archives. This is from the Springhill mining disaster in Nova Scotia. The date is the 1st of November, 1958. Listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

One of the men has said, this word came up from the mine, that they had survived these eight and a half days, probably 213, 214 hours, they had survived in a pocket of the mine that was left by god. This is the way he put it. Those are his words.

AMT: Okay. That’s from the archives. Sebastian Junger, you write about that. What happened down in that mine to pique your interest?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Well, a tragic situation as all mining disasters are and they happen so regularly. There was a collapse and an explosion and a collapse of the mine structures at the Springhill mine and all the passageways were blocked by debris. Scores of people were crushed to death. Scores escaped that were above the blockages. And some 19 men were trapped two miles down a mineshaft, in complete darkness. And they had their lamps. For a while, they had their lamps. When they finally recovered those men Canadian psychologists interviewed them, studied them because they were curious how people had adapted to this incredibly stressful situation. What happened was, the lamps sort of lasted for a few days. And they used those days to try to dig their way out. They finally recovered those men cycle Canadian psychologists interviewed them studied them because they were curious how people had adapted to this incredibly stressful situation what had happened was the lamp sort of lasted for a few days and they used those days to try to dig their way out. They couldn't do it. There was just too much material in the way. They didn’t have any water – almost no water. They didn’t have any food. They started drinking their own urine. They started trying to eat coal. And the men were really suffering. And then the lamps went out. I mean, just imagine - I mean, just try to picture this. They were stuck two miles down in the earth in complete absolute darkness, many of them badly hurt, not knowing, having no way to know if they would eventually be rescued before they died or if they were just going to die down there and stay in that mine shaft for eternity. And they had no way of knowing and it was completely dark. So, two kinds of leaders emerged. The first kind sort of sprang into action immediately after the explosion and these were men who were sort of action-oriented. They literally grabbed pick axes and started trying to dig their way to safety. These were men who were not interested in negotiating with other -achieving group consensus about anything. They did not care at all about how other people felt. They just attacked the problem. It was one kind of leader and a very, very important kind of leader in a crisis. But after the escape attempts failed, they had a different challenge. In some ways, a harder one, a psychological challenge, which is maintaining your call him in psychologically impossible circumstances, in complete darkness, with no idea what's going to happen to you and fighting off the sense of claustrophobia and the terrors. I mean, just imagine how hard it was. And so a different kind of leader emerged in the darkness. And these were men who were not action-oriented, but they were empathic. They would try to help people calm their panic. They would achieve group consensus about what to do or what not to do. They were good at waiting and keeping up morale. It was a very different skill set from the first leaders. And so the conclusion that the study came to was that human society - I'm broadening it a little bit but the conclusion was that a group of people, basically a microcosm of human society, a group of people in a crisis - need two different kinds of leadership in that they will arise spontaneously and each are equally necessary.

AMT: Is there a difference between how men and women respond to each other in times of disaster?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Yes, often. I mean, the study didn't address this. It was all men in the mineshaft. But I looked at statistics from what are called bystander rescues. So you're walking down the street and you see someone in great peril in a burning building or whatever, you're not related to them, you don't know them, you owe them nothing, maybe you have children at home, maybe you have a lot of reasons to want to live, and you run into the burning building a great risk to your own life. There's a fatality rate of something like 20 per cent in these bystander rescues. I mean, it’s a fatality rate that's considerably higher than most units in the US military. The people who do these rescues are almost exclusively men. If it's a mixed group, women will wait for men to carry out those rescues. If there's only women around, a woman will do it. But if there's an alternative and there are men to do that kind of thing, women will let them do it. But there's another kind of courage, which I call moral courage and that is something that women excel at and it has more to do with the kind of society that we want to live in, a compassionate society. It plays to some of the qualities of the second type of leader that I talked about in the mining disaster. So another study that I saw was of gentile families – non-Jewish families - in Europe who helped shelter Jews who were fleeing the Germans in areas under German occupation and they were hiding from the German authorities because, of course, the Germans were killing Jews. And if you were a non-Jewish family and you hid a Jewish family in your basement and the authorities found out, you were dead. They killed you. You were just as dead as if you ran into a burning building. But it didn't require the kind of immediate muscular action that bystander rescue usually requires. But it could be just as deadly and what they found was that women were more likely to make that amazing decision, that courageous decision, they were more likely to make that decision than men were.

AMT: You talk about compassion. We can't be talking about how people respond to disaster without thinking of Fort McMurray right now. Fire forced 90,000 people from their homes in northern Alberta. Strangers are taking them in. They’re feeding them. I spoke to firefighters who were rescuing pets and in, like, the two hours they had in 50 hours of straight firefighting. If they had two hours of down time, they were rescuing pets. You wrote a book that followed forest firefighters. What kicks in that elicits so much generosity on such a big scale?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Yeah. I mean, there’s two different things. Firefighters are professionals and, at least the guys that I know - I hope this doesn't sound callous to anybody - but the guys that I know in United States and we haven't had a calamity like that I should add. Most of our fires have happened in really wild areas and have not reached towns. But the guys that I knew and the women on those crews that I knew, they really liked fighting fire. And it's like with soldiers - I mean, their sort of ultimate nightmare was a summer with no forest fires. And I hate to put it that way, but they did not want to be sitting around their bases playing cards and the soldiers that I knew did not want to be sitting around their bases playing cards either. If there wasn't combat for a while, they got pretty itchy.

AMT: Well, certainly the firefighters who have streamed into Fort McMurray didn't want to be out of Fort McMurray. They wanted to be there and help. Yeah.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you're trained you’re trained for an emergency like that it feels right to use your skills to save people. I mean, of course-- or save houses or whatever. But there's the other question is that the incredible compassion and cooperation of the civilian population towards each other towards itself. So people have this idea that if there's a calamity, that mayhem breaks out and the people are looting stores and turning on each other and it's sort of this Hobbesian world, only the strong will survive is completely untrue and what happens-- I mean, the Hobbesian world is actually much more likely to happen in a stable affluent society where people don't need each other. But when a calamity happens, people do need each other and they get incredibly generous. There was-- I found one account of an earthquake in Italy in the early 1900s, Avezzano, Italy. And the earthquake killed 90 per cent of the population of this area, something like that. It was catastrophic. And the survivors were isolated for days and one of the survivors wrote. He said that all class distinction disappeared – rich, poor, didn't matter. The survivors huddled together and helped each other and for a while it was this sort of social utopia. And he said that the earthquake produced what the law promises but cannot, in fact, deliver, which is the equality of all men. And I think what you see in Canada, you guys are seeing a little bit of that. I mean, everyone's helping each other in that area. It’s a very moving thing to experience.

AMT: I want to go to a personal anecdote of yours. You are in Gillette, Wyoming. The year is 1986. What are you doing and what happens?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Well, I was young then and I wanted to see my country and I loaded up a backpack with a sleeping bag and a camping stove and some whatever, some gear, and I headed out, and in the sort of tradition of Jack Kerouac or whatever, as I imagined. And there I was outside Gillette, Wyoming, which is a pretty tough mining town in Wyoming. I'd never been west before and it was freezing cold, late October, and I was on the side of the highway and people were throwing beer bottles at me out of pickup trucks. It was not a very friendly place. And I was standing there waiting for a ride. I was there for hours and I saw this guy walking towards me on the on-ramp from town and he didn't look good. I mean, he was a big guy. His clothes were in tatters. His hair was matted. He was having a rough day. And, yeah, just a young college kid, you know, I was on my guard immediately, and he walked up to me. He was carrying a lunch box. And he walked up to me and he said, hey, where you going? I said, I'm going to California. And he said, hmm, that’s a long way. What you got food in your bag? And, you know, I was just paranoid. I thought he wanted me—I thought he was going to ask for food. Of course, I’d give food to anyone who’s hungry. I had a lot of food in my bag. I mean, I was prepared for this trip, you know. But I thought he wanted to open up my bag-- I thought he wanted to steal--I don't know. I just I just got paranoid. And I said, I just got a little cheese. And he shook his head and he said, you can't possibly get to California on a little cheese. And he said, I live in town. I live in my car. He lived in a car. He didn’t have a home. He said, I live my car in town and every day I walk out to the coal mines, three miles out, to see if anyone’s sick and so maybe I can get some work for the day and most days they don't need me, so I walk home, so I won't be needing this today. Now that I'm not working today, I won't be needing my lunch, which, I think, he probably had gotten at a local church or something, and he opened up his lunch box and had a bologna sandwich, an apple, and a bag of potato chips. And I immediately started feeling just awful about my paranoia, my suspicion of him. And he made me take his lunch and he gave me his lunch. He really gave me something much more valuable, which is this sort of lesson about humanity and it wasn't even about generosity. I mean, a lot of people are generous. He had taken responsibility for me. He'd seen me out on the highway and some part of him had decided that he and I were kind of in the same tribe, we were in the same boat, and he was looking out for a brother even though we didn't know each other and he walked a half mile out the highway to just to make sure I was okay and to give me his lunch. He is probably the most monumental example of generosity that I've personally encountered in my life and it came from one of the very poorest and most desperate people that I've probably ever met.

AMT: You've never forgotten him.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: No. He’s been with me my whole life.

AMT: You don't know his name?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: I have no idea.

AMT: Does it give you hope then that people want to look after each other, that we want to be part of a tribe?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: You know, we live in a modern society. There are great blessings to our society, obviously. I don't need to enumerate them. But the downside is that we live these individualistic lives, and individualistic even if we're in a family, that doesn't count. I mean, that doesn't count for community; it's family. It's a different thing. It's important, but it's different. We lead these individualistic lives and it leaves us deeply discontent, deeply unhappy, and as wealth rises in society the suicide rate goes up, the depression rate goes up. It shouldn't be doing that. And I think we have this longing. It’s programmed by two million years of evolution. We have this longing to belong and we don't know how to go about doing that in a society that provides most of our physical needs through mechanical means, not through the community itself.

AMT: So much for us to think about in this book of yours. Thank you very much, Sebastian Junger.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Thank you.

AMT: Sebastian Younger is the author of Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging. He joined us from New York City.

[Music]

Fort McMurray mayor on return of evacuees

Guest: Melissa Blake

AMT: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One, on Sirius XM, and online on cbc.ca/thecurrent. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. You just heard Sebastian Junger talking about how people look after each other at times of trauma and we also discussed the great outpouring of help for the people of Fort McMurray who had to leave their city because of wildfires. Many, of course, have little to nothing left in Fort McMurray. Their homes and neighbourhoods have been destroyed by the fire, but for those with a home to go back to, this Wednesday June 1st, looms large. That is when a phased re-entry begins and for evacuees there's a lot of uncertainty about what they will see when they get there. Paulette Biggar is the co-owner of the Diamond Grove RV Park, west of Edmonton. It’s become something of a "little Fort McMurray", as more than half of the lots in the park filled up with about 800 Fort Mac evacuees in their recreational vehicles. The CBC's Emily Fitzpatrick visited that park this weekend.

SOUNDCLIP

PAULETTE BIGGAR: We've heard a lot of people talking. They don't know what’s happening. They don’t know. A lot of them are thinking they want to go in June, on their days. They're going to leave their units here. They're going to go see what they're faced with. We've heard, last night actually, one of the people here has a friend who's a firefighter. He said the firefighter told him that, realistically, he doesn't see anybody moving there to live full-time before September.

CHILD 1: It's kind of fun. There's new things to see, fun activities. But also you kind of just worry. Like, what's happening back at home? Is the fire still up? How many houses are going to be burnt down? When is it going to stop?

CHILD 2: I'm worrying because I'm, like, is there any smoke tornadoes? Is there any hurricanes? Is there any fires? So, um, I looked at lots of windows before I went evacuating.

CHILD 3: I just think it's vacation. Pretty much.

AMT: Well, some of the other voices you heard were from Fort McMurray - Aidan Butler, Blake Remillard, and Jobe Schiltroth - at the Diamond Grove RV Park just outside of Edmonton, their temporary home right now. Melissa Blake is the mayor of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo and that includes Fort McMurray. We've reached her in Edmonton where she has been staying since she was forced from her home. Hello, Mayor Blake.

MELISSA BLAKE: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: What do you make of what you just heard there coming from the Diamond Grove RV Park? Some of those kids, their reality is a little different, huh?

MELISSA BLAKE: Well, it certainly makes me smile, because it is just the perfect, most pure expression of what our entire population must be thinking right now.

AMT: What can you tell us about how liveable Fort McMurray is right now? How ready it is for a return?

MELISSA BLAKE: We're certainly gearing up for our phased re-entry. We've got lots of things in hand, including the key criteria that we needed was, first of all, there is no imminent threat from the fire. I know that we're over-preparing people in many respects, because we do have – the request is that they do bring in about 14 days’ worth of supplies and prescriptions and so on. And anybody who may have difficulties with breathing, air quality is another big issue. So we try to give them the worst case scenario. I think what people will be very pleasantly surprised to see is that when they get home there will be the shock of witnessing how much loss there has been, but there will also be the amazement of how much has been retained. And when they get to cross that home barrier for the first time, I think it will be an amazing experience.

AMT: So is it still that 90 per cent of the structures are standing?

MELISSA BLAKE: Yes, indeed. I’ve had the opportunity to tour the community on a few occasions and so we know the hard hit areas. We know the Beacon Hill, Abasand, and Waterways are significant, Saprae Creek is significant, throughout Anzac, and then some neighbourhoods almost looks like a meteor strike in the middle of the neighbourhood without taking anything else around it.

AMT: Now, you are telling people to bring in 14 days of groceries. The grocery stores are not open?

MELISSA BLAKE: They have been preparing for this. In fact, we have a Safeway way that is open. I understand, the stocks are – they’re half stocked, so we do have some stuff in the community, but, again, for people just bring what you're familiar with [indecipherable] as quickly as possible.

MELISSA BLAKE: Right. How’s the hospital?

MELISSA BLAKE: We have [indecipherable] been serving the thousand people in the community up to this point. And it's, I'm told, it's been normal. It can do just about everything except retain patients, so the air transport can take them out, but [indecipherable] as well.

AMT: Right. You’re breaking up a bit, but I think I'm understanding you. What about drinking water? There's a boil water advisory right? Or a boil water order?

MELISSA BLAKE: There is and that will remain in effect until we have effectively cleaned those water systems as well. We are anticipating sometime in the last week or so of June, we should be able to turn the taps on regularly again, but in between water supply is going to be potable.

AMT: And air quality, what can you tell us about that?

MELISSA BLAKE: Absolutely intermittent. We've seen some really wonderful clear days, much like what we have normally, and then we've had the sling where weather will push the smoke into the community and we'll have some really hard breathing days. So in preparation for that we’ve encouraged people to bring some N95 masks just in case it's [indecipherable].

AMT: People are going to go back just to see, actually, what's there too, I guess. In terms of clean-up, how is that how is that going to be handled?

MELISSA BLAKE: Well, it's probably going to be a coordinated effort between insurance companies and anybody else that needs to be involved. We’ve had some volunteer groups that have come up. The Billy Graham Evangelical Society, I think is there, offering one-on-one type support to people. But I think it's going to be a very collective effort with industry all working in the same direction.

AMT: Well, you know, when you talk about a collective effort, we just heard Sebastian Junger talk about how people really come together. We've seen this historically in other disasters and I'm wondering what you were thinking as you listened to him talk about that with your own experience in Fort Mac.

MELISSA BLAKE: I would say that I’ve seen the devastation of a lot of that as I go through these different pockets of people and it's amazing to see a community that was strong to begin with become even stronger because of the incredible support we’re getting from everywhere we're located.

AMT: And you say you've been back a couple of times now since that first time when you went in with the media?

MELISSA BLAKE: Yes, indeed.

AMT: And as you go in each time, what would what's going through your mind, Melissa Blake? Do you notice different things each time?

MELISSA BLAKE: Yeah, I would say I do. The first one was, again, it was rather shocking and eye-opening, just absorbing what I was experiencing. But even at that point I started seeing hope that re-entry was going to be imminent and it was going to be not as hard as what I had imagined from a lot of coverage I had been watching. So every time I go back that hope just continues to grow and then the vision for what we could be again in the future starts to take over.

AMT: And I would imagine you're on a bit of a mission when you go in there. You are the mayor. You've got a lot to do. But I'm wondering how it hits you emotionally.

MELISSA BLAKE: You know, the difficulty of being an evacuee myself and trying to manage all the things that are related to trying to set my family up straight, to do what I can for them, at the same time is recognizing the important role I have as a leader, it's just-- I think it's such an incredible privilege to serve even in times like these, it's probably even more important. So it's a tough balancing act, but honestly my passion has always been community and the people that are there.

AMT: What have you learned about leadership through all this?

MELISSA BLAKE: That I am far stronger in crisis than I am with the incredible support that comes. The generosity, the compassion, the wonderful sentiments that we’re receiving from across our nation and even beyond has been incredible and it is what reduces me into something more of a crying mess than the crisis. I can deal with the tough stuff.

AMT: If someone had told you that your city would be facing this, a year ago, what would you have thought?

MELISSA BLAKE: I would have thought it not impossible that we'd have fires. We've had them before. But I would have said, no way will it ever attack the city. That just doesn't even make sense. Why would it? There's a whole great big boreal forest beyond. It doesn't need our family homes or anything. But the reality is, it's non-selective and we found that out really hard really fast.

AMT: And, again, going back to leadership, I’m just like, so you learned about yourself too in dealing with that because you had to act fast.

MELISSA BLAKE: There is no question in my mind that the crisis we experienced, particularly on that - I call it Black Tuesday - on Black Tuesday when the skies darkened and the people began moving, the ability to see so many people flee with great, great patience - it's hard to imagine fleeing with patience, but that's what a lot of folks are doing for us - there's not a [indecipherable] I think that could have done much better than what they did.

AMT: And when will you bring your family back? Do you know?

MELISSA BLAKE: I've got kids in school. The bigger driver for us is to make sure that I don't disrupt their schooling one more time this year. So at the end of the school year they'll be back in fully. I plan to be up on my evacuation re-entry date of the second of June. So, my husband and I will go up and we'll assess, check some of the things we wish we had for the last month as well, and we'll probably be back on weekends so the kids can see their home and do the same thing.

AMT: So your home is standing?

MELISSA BLAKE: It is, very fortunately.

AMT: And as you drive through the city, though, you've seen a lot. What do you want people to think about, who are going back in? You’ve kind of warned them about the shock of it. What might they not expect?

MELISSA BLAKE: You know, one of things that has me most concerned is the people and their reaction. It’s going to be various by all 88,000 or so people that will see and experience it. And my encouragement to anybody who is having, again, that difficulty, it's imperative that you seek out the mental health professionals. The health and wellness of our citizens is what's going to give us the strength to pull through this and so if somebody in the community needs help, I want to make sure that they get that right help.

AMT: And when you talk about a wellness, you make the point you have a field hospital that people with any kind of on-going medical needs - are they being advised to stay away a little longer?

MELISSA BLAKE: I'm not sure if individuals have been approached. But, again, when we do our communications we speak to people who have asthma, asthma as being maybe one not wanting to come back, young children might not. Again, it's about processing the air that they will be breathing potentially in the area. Other stuff that I haven't thought about, of course, are ones that are receiving dialysis treatment and so on. These are just not going to be readily available and so staying away a little bit longer will make sure that the hospital gets up and running. And there's just so many other things that people could be facing that may not facilitate the easiest re-entry, so we're just saying, folks, if you can wait a little bit longer, maybe you should look at doing that as well.

AMT: It'll be a long summer.

MELISSA BLAKE: It will be. But, again, if you can move past the tragedy and into the potential, I think we've got great potential.

AMT: Well, thank you for speaking with me today. We will be watching as people start moving in on Wednesday. Thank you so much for your time.

MELISSA BLAKE: And thank you.

AMT: Melissa Blake, mayor of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, that includes Fort McMurray. She's in Edmonton right now. Re-entry to Fort McMurray begins Wednesday June 1st, this Wednesday. That's our program for today. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

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May 30, 2016 full episode transcript

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