A multi-faceted approach to healing
A tragic event can take a split second to unfold, but months to recover from.
Moncton, N.B., knows this all too well, as it marked in June the one-year anniversary of the shooting that killed three RCMP officers and injured two others.
The crisis touched everyone — the RCMP officers who hunted for the shooter, the first responders who dealt with the wounded and fallen, and the community members who remained in lockdown for more than 30 hours.
While the shooter has been sentenced to life in prison, the fallout of the tragedy is still being felt today.
"We certainly know there are still people out there that have a need for support," says Laurann Hanson, manager of human resources for the City of Moncton.
Over the days, weeks and months following the shooting, many different resources were made available to everyone in Moncton, catering to a variety of needs for officers and citizens alike.
A chance meeting
Surprisingly, plans for recovery began before the shooting in Moncton had even happened.
Just one week before the tragic events unfolded, Andrew Easton, an official from the New Brunswick Department of Public Safety, attended a conference in Boston. The meeting provided information on how the city responded to and recovered from the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
The conference was led and organized by one of the United States' top emergency managers, Richard Serino, former chief of Boston Emergency Medical Services and former deputy administrator of the U.S.'s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Serino has dealt with some of the U.S.'s biggest emergencies, including the Boston bombing and Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
At the conference, Easton, along with a number of Canadian officials, attended Serino's presentation on handling disasters. What they didn't realize was the lessons learned at the conference would become directly applicable to Moncton days later.
Open dialogue
Since the city had never experienced a tragedy like this, officials were left scrambling and looking for advice.
"We certainly needed someone to talk to and gather whatever assistance and guidance we could," says Hanson.
Easton reached out to Serino and asked if he would be willing to offer advice to Moncton. Serino immediately saw similarities to the Boston marathon bombing where a comparable lockdown and manhunt took place. In both Boston and Moncton, police officers, first responders and the community members were all affected.
"It was an opportunity to take some of the lessons I've learned from experience and share them," says Serino.
Serino highlighted the importance of providing help to the community in a crisis, even after the incident has passed.
"Having resources and support to help the survivors and the city recover and focus on the positive things is important," says Serino.
A city responding
In the hours following the shooting, the province of New Brunswick contacted officials in Moncton and offered to connect them with Serino.
The goal was to ensure the city was reaching out to those that needed it, making sure citizens knew how to get help in the coming weeks and months.
The need for providing community resources really hit home for Hanson when she began hearing stories from co-workers who lived in the area affected by the shooting. She realized not everyone has access to mental health assistance programs.
"I realized that this was going to have detrimental effects on people in the community if they didn't get help," says Hanson.
She immediately found out what resources were available locally, and contacted mental health providers within the community. Two health networks, Horizon and Vitalité, partnered with the city to provide their expertise and services.
"As providers we assume that everybody knows what is offered and how to access things, but that's not always the case," says Kathleen Buchanan, coordinator at Horizon Health Network.
In collaboration with the city, Horizon created an information brochure on mental health and coping, advertising the available resources in the community. The brochure was distributed to residences and businesses in and around the lock-down zone several months after the shooting.
"Nobody was untouched by this. People react in different ways, so having an official place where people can get help is important," says Dawn Arnold, councillor at large for the City of Moncton.
Community healing
Serino also stressed the importance of holding memorials and vigils to help the community move forward while remembering the victims.
Within the Moncton community itself, memorial events were held at the direction and discretion of residents. Arnold was part of a committee of residents that decided to plan their own events tailored for the specific needs of the community.
"Everybody wanted to do something," says Arnold. "When tragic events happen, people want to do something positive to counteract it."
Residents did not want a permanent memorial in their neighbourhood to remind them of the shooting. Instead, they planned a "street beautification" on Hildegard Drive, where the lockdown happened.
This past May, residents planted 125 trees on both sides of the street, with clusters of three red maples to represent the three fallen Mounties. Many RCMP officers came out to help plant the trees as residents, not in uniform.
"We are a strong community that is known for looking out for one another," says Arnold. "I think what we've done has helped and it really felt like the right thing to do."
Police support
Within the larger community, the RCMP Codiac Regional Detachment provided some of its own tailored support for officers following the shooting.
"Our goal was to ensure that each and every person had a place to go and ensure their emotional health was triaged," says Sgt. Liane Vail of New Brunswick RCMP Health Services.
Within 24 hours of the shooting, they set up a week-long temporary drop-in centre with health teams and counsellors available for one-on-one meetings with members. The centre also ran sessions, providing information on mental health and returning to work after trauma.
The detachment decided to put all members on leave for two weeks. Before returning to work, members had to be screened for fitness for duty by a team of psychologists, doctors and nurses. New Brunswick RCMP Health Services also hired a nurse to provide support for members for one year after the shooting.
For those wanting more discreet help, the RCMP implemented an online psychological monitoring system in collaboration with the Operational Stress Injury Clinic run by Horizon Health. The tool let members self-assess their mental state. If the system flagged a participant, someone from health services would follow-up with the RCMP member within 24 hours.
The monitoring system was available to members for one year following the shooting, and is now under review. If the system is deemed successful, it could become an ongoing tool used by New Brunswick RCMP to assess the mental readiness of members.
Vail says the tool received more than 900 hits in the time that it was up and running.
From nurses to presentations to online tools, a range of resources and support avenues were offered to Moncton RCMP officers.
"It's a complex system. What works for one person might not work for another," says Vail. "Just the fact that we had various resources available was a reassurance to members that they were being looked after."
Moving forward
Ample resources were provided for both the community and RCMP members. And more than a year later, Moncton still has help available for those that need it.
"We can all be leaders in ensuring each other's well-being," says Vail. "The more that we come together and share our resources, the more we're going to have a healthy community."
Like Serino said, sharing not only resources, but the insight on how to handle traumatic events is important to help communities heal. It adds to the body of knowledge, better equipping cities to cope with tragedies and disasters.
"Having the support of someone who's been there before can really make a difference in people's recovery," says Serino. "That's the reason I reached out — we are all one community regardless of where we're from."