The Heart Work – Forest Service Casualty Assistance

Employee safety is a top priority for the USDA Forest Service. But if the unexpected occurs, the agency has a program to help.

Through the Forest Service Casualty Assistance Program (CAP), employees and their family members are offered the following after accidents or injuries:

• Liaisons to help an injured employees or the family of a deceased employee
• Guidance on accessing benefits
• Transportation, mortuary, burial and funeral honors services
• Emotional support resources for grief and trauma
• Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) peer supporters, working alongside professional clinicians
• Public affairs assistance, such as working with the media

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“I describe it as 'the heart work'. It is holding space with people on what is likely their worst day,” said Wendy Mortier, who worked as the Forest Service’s national coordinator for CISM.

Mortier started her Forest Service career as a hotshot when she was 18 years old. In addition to working a season on an engine and in aviation, she spent 15 years supporting emergency response in the Stanislaus National Forest’s dispatch center. 

In the early 2010s, following a sudden off-duty death of an employee, she joined a grassroots effort to create a local program to assist staff and family members with the effects of a casualty, accident or ailment. They called it “Taking Care of Our Own, Stanislaus Edition.”

“We collected the policy. We developed some checklists. We identified what we called at the time 'patient advocates', because this is before there was a hospital and family liaison program. We solicited some volunteers. We made up our own training to get prepared for the next time.”

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Molly Day – currently the CAP manager for the Pacific Southwest Region (Region 5) – was working on the Stanislaus National Forest in fire prevention at the time and became one of the early volunteers for the local program.

“Wendy and I found ourselves together, taking care of families. She put a lot of energy into trying to get processes in place. Being a [dispatch] center manager, she knew how to mobilize people.”

As a former hotshot, Day had first-hand understanding of the stress and trauma that sometimes comes with being a first responder for emergencies like wildfires. This inspired her to become a peer supporter for staff experiencing trauma after incidents.

“I miss the work that I used to do when I was part of a [wildland firefighting] crew. That was the best. I can't prevent a critical incident from happening, but if I can prevent extra stress after it happens, awesome.”

Support across to country

While participating in available trainings and providing support to incidents, Mortier and Day joined with dedicated employees across the country to advocate for a coordinated national program. In addition to the localized “Taking Care of Our Own” program that emerged on the Stanislaus National Forest, a group of San Bernardino National Forest employees worked to develop training and guidance in response to lessons learned from the 2006 Esperanza Fire, authoring a new training course.

“I call the ‘You Will Not Stand Alone’ class an appetizer of all these different facets of taking care of people during a traumatic event or casualty,” explained Mortier. “The skills that you learn in that class are life skills.”

As part of the continued development of the agency’s program, full-time national and regional positions have been created in recent years to coordinate and support staff members that volunteer to provide assistance to impacted staff and family members as an extra duty.

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“In 2021, Region 5 was the first to put a box on the org chart, and I got the very first permanent full-time position in casualty assistance in the history of the Forest Service,” said Mortier. “And in May 2023, I was promoted to the National Critical Incident Stress Management coordinator position out of the Washington D.C. Office [of the Forest Service].”

Today, most regions have at least one full-time position. And when Mortier started working in the national office, Day moved into one of two full-time positions in Region 5.

“The people that we've lost — our fallen — they would want the people they cared about to be taken care of. And so being a mechanism to try to do that ... that's a huge honor.”

• To learn more, visit the USDA Forest Service’s Casualty Assistance Program. 
• Staff interested in becoming involved can contact their regional CAP coordinator.