Responder Resilience

Twenty-five years after 9/11, more than 600 FDNY members have died from Ground Zero-related illness, nearly double the number lost in the collapse itself. Retired FDNY Deputy Chief Richard Alles arrived 20 minutes after the second tower fell and spent nine months on-site. Today, as Director of 9/11 Community Affairs for Barasch & McGarry, he works full-time helping fir...

Dr. Johnny Torgeson opened a top-grossing fitness franchise at 25, served as an Army sergeant, and now commands operations at a federal fire department. Along the way he identified a gap most fire officers never get taught: how to actually build a team, not just staff one.

He wrote Forging Your Team: Demystifying Team Development for First Responders. Then he ...

The response to Ground Zero didn't end in 2001. For the FDNY, it became a 25 year path through recovery, transformation, and choices most agencies will never have to make.5 Fewer than 600 of the 11,500 FDNY firefighters who were at the World Trade Center on September 11 remain on the job. In addition to the 343 members lost on 9/11, more than 400 additional members have si...

Terry Hastings didn't set out to become New York State's first Chief Wellness Officer. He built the case for the role one needs assessment, one training module, one hard conversation at a time.

He partnered with the Institute for Disaster Mental Health and the Benjamin Center at SUNY New Paltz to survey over 6,000 first responders statewide, the first assessment of its ...

The injury gets treated. The claim gets filed. The responder gets lost in between.

Retired Battalion Chief David Picone spent years inside a system that's supposed to cover everything: prevention, behavioral health, cancer, rehab, the claim itself,  and watched it fail at the seams. So he rebuilt it. Thirty-four integrated policies. Injury rates down. A wellness center ...