The responders who have answered the call to help with Hurricane Helene relief efforts in North Carolina know they will be in for long days, seven days a week - but it's worth it to help their fellow Americans in a time of need. With that said, while the work can be personally satisfying at the end of the deployment, it can also take its toll on response team members.

Because of this it's sometimes important to take care of these caretakers, and the Critical Incident Stress Management program provides some added support to those who are supporting so many others.

Shannon Maness, chief ranger at B. Everett Jordan Lake outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, in the Wilmington district, recently made a visit to the Emergency Field Office to see how USACE employees are handling their deployment. Maness also serves as a peer supporter with Wilmington District's Critical Incident Stress Management team.

"The district commander had contacted our chief of operations here in Wilmington District. They needed somebody to come out because of a death in the family of an employee," he said. "I'm centrally located in North Carolina, and I was available, so I said, sure, I'd be happy to come. When there's stuff like that that goes on, if we can get there within a given timeframe and be able to provide support, of course, we will."

Maness said he wanted to check on employees and share some tips to manage stress.

"My goal and the commander's goal are to make sure all the staff members are doing okay as far as their stress level for what they have going on," he said. "Anytime when you're dealing with days on end for a long portion of time - you're working 12 hours a day, you don't have a day off, it's hot out, you know, there's multiple factors can affect everybody's stress level. If you're the hard driving guy or lady, it doesn't matter - it's all fine until it isn't. And it sometimes it can happen very suddenly."

"It can be that one straw that broke the camel's back. You may be fine now and then get a call about something else and that's what sets you off, and now you have a level of stress that causes you not to be able to do your job or be able to do your job less effectively than usual," he added.

While the work can be demanding physically and emotionally, Maness said he was pleased with what he's found while speaking with those on the hurricane relief team.

"I'm looking to see by how everybody's dealing with working in a disaster zone for a large amounts of time and dealing with long days - 12 hour days and no days to go home, when you may be missing your family, you're missing your grandkids, you're missing your wife, or your husband, and then on top of that, you have to get to know and work with new team members," he said. "From what I've seen here, everybody's really getting along well with each other. There's a lot of team building, interacting, trusting each other. I would even garner to say the ones that I've spoken with have been more than a teammate. It's been more like family, because you're basically living with each other for 12 hours, each day."

Maness said there are multiple ways to deal with stress - with one of the most important being having someone to talk to.

"There are different ways of dealing with stress, so that's we try to give people avenues of how to deal with that - do you have somebody that you talk with? Do you have somebody that's a close confidant that you share with? Maybe that's a friend, relative, brother, sister, could be anybody, could be just having a conversation, sitting down with a teammate, could be somebody else," he said. "Then, the other thing is to get plenty of rest, drink water, eat normally, go to bed at normal time. All that helps reduce our stress levels. And sometimes we can't do that when we're deployed, but remember we're always flexible, be semper Gumby."

Maness reminds everyone he meets that anything they discuss is confidential.

"Everything that we share is confidential. We won't share anything, that if you tell us what you tell us, it stays with us," he said.

Source: U.S.Army