Michael Hoffman

As a 28 year veteran of the Fire and Rescue Services, I wish to offer my full support of HB 586. We choose this career with an overwhelming desire to help those in dire need, but sometimes there is nothing we can do to save the lives of young and innocent children. Specifics are too gruesome to share and sometimes the victims are the same age as our own children. My experience is that virtually everyone who has responded to emergency calls for a decade or more has at least one call that haunts them. I was fortunate to work for a town that provided an Employee Assistance Program, not all small communities realize the need until one of their own has taken the plunge off the deep end. The suicide rate for Police and Firefighters is over 50% higher than the general population. The Suicide Prevention Resource Center at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) found that Police and Firefighters are more like to die by suicide than a Line of Duty Death, including heart attacks. The severe depression rate is twice that of the general population. Families are destroyed... alcohol abuse touches too many of our ranks and communities lose valuable first responders. Small communities need the ability to take care of those who protect the families in their small community... where everyone one knows each other. Please vote yes on HB 586 Mike Hoffman, Captain, Ret. Durham Fire Department