It was the worst possible scenario: Mitchell’s own workmates responded to the 911 call from a citizen reporting his suicide. Mecham began to manage the emotional fallout he knew was coming. A sheriff’s deputy met Mitchell’s parents at their church. In terse, tight communications, the region’s first responders moved swiftly to recover the body of a brother in uniform.Ī Cal Fire division chief who knew Mitchell’s parents was dispatched to locate them another was sent to notify Mitchell’s estranged wife, who had been looking for him when he failed to pick up his 16-month-old son. But once it became clear that a Cal Fire captain was involved, the tenor of the emergency response changed. The 911 calls did not identify the jumper. I pulled over, and as my wife drove, I got on the phone and started making calls.” “I remember it as clear as day,” Mecham said. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but Ryan Mitchell just jumped off the Pine Valley Bridge,” the chief told Mecham. His duty chief reached him while he was driving with his wife on a freeway in the San Fernando Valley. When he received two calls in five minutes, he knew it was something serious. Tony Mecham, Mitchell’s battalion chief in El Cajon, was driving back from a family emergency and left strict instructions not to be bothered. A phone tree began heating up with the same urgent question: “Have you heard from Ryan?” on that Sunday, when many of Mitchell’s family members and friends were at church. Finding RyanĬell phones began buzzing around 11 a.m. Three co-workers in Cal Fire died last week. “I can’t tell you how many coworkers and longtime friends have killed themselves, and four times as many have attempted it in the last few years. Tony Martinez, a Cal Fire captain in Napa County, said many coworkers have committed suicide - or attempted to, some multiple times. One jammed a stick of dynamite in his mouth and lit the fuse. The statistics paint a grim picture: Desperate firefighters turn guns on themselves or drive into trees. “I can’t tell you how many coworkers and longtime friends have killed themselves, and four times as many have attempted it in the last few years.” Tony Martinez, Cal Fire captain in Napa County Jeff Dill, a retired fire chief who founded the alliance, estimates that only about a third of firefighter suicides are identified because of the social stigma and code of silence. National data also is sparse, but suicides appears to be increasing nationwide: The alliance has verified 1,750 firefighter suicides since 1880, with 95% of the deaths occurring between 20. It was 2017, and Mitchell was one of at least 117 firefighters across the country who took their own lives that year, according to the Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance, the only national organization that tracks such figures.Īlthough there are ample anecdotal stories about suicides among California firefighters, there is no data detailing the scope of the problem at Cal Fire. Mitchell got out of his car, walked onto the Pine Valley Creek Bridge and stepped off the 440-foot-high span. Nearby, large public-service signs urged anyone considering suicide to call a toll-free number. He drove half an hour through picturesque rolling hills to a remote bridge in San Diego County and pulled off to the side of the road.
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