As Fires Worsen, A Mental Health Crisis For Those Battling Them

Somewhere near his fifty-sixth straight hour of chasing flames, CalFire Captain Matt Newberry and his crew were hitting a wall. They'd been dispatched to the wildfire days earlier in the middle of the night. By the next morning, the fire had already ripped across 11,000 acres of Napa County, tearing even through the night the way fires do now.

Despite everything they'd done, hundreds of homes were in smolders.

A good friend and fellow firefighter, "one of the toughest dudes in our unit," Newberry said, broke down. "Just fall to his knees and cry. He couldn't do it anymore."

Newberry had been there himself: Exhausted. Exasperated. Overwhelmed.

Firefighting has always been hard work. But each year fires just seem to get worse. Four million acres in California. Millions more in Oregon, Washington and Colorado. Flames sweeping across Eastern Australia, the Amazon and the Arctic. Thousands of homes destroyed. Lives lost.

"You just feel defeated," said Newberry, who's been fighting fire for more than 20 years. "The things that we used to do that worked ten years ago are no longer working anymore."