Bellmore fire chief dedicated to promoting mental health among first responders hangs up FDNY helmet

A Bellmore firefighter dedicated to promoting mental health among Long Island’s first responders hung up one of his hats to applause in Manhattan Tuesday morning.

At 9 a.m. Tuesday, about a dozen members of FDNY Ladder 3 & Battalion 6 in Union Square shook Chief Steve Marsar’s hand, hugged him and congratulated him on retiring after a 35-year career as a New York City firefighter.

"It’s bittersweet because I love coming to work, I still like to do it," Marsar, 63, said, sporting his white chief’s hat and a T-shirt adorned with a firefighting bear and the phrase "I’M FIRED UP FOR RETIREMENT." He added: "But on the other side, it’s a good time to move on while I’m young enough and healthy enough to enjoy retirement."

First in the city, then on Long Island, Marsar was voluntarily trained as a peer support counselor to help firefighters reeling from traumatic calls, from fatal fires to car crashes where children and teenagers could not be resuscitated. He has long served as the director and one of three coordinators of the Nassau County Critical Incident Stress Management Team that deploys to local firehouses following tragedies. He plans to keep wearing that hat — and his Bellmore Fire Department helmet — a little while longer before passing the baton to other hands capable of managing this essential work.

Fourteen percent of firefighters who participated in a recent statewide survey of more than 6,000 paid and volunteer first responders reported thoughts of suicide, Newsday previously reported. Thousands of first responders reported mental health struggles such as anxiety and depression, and 92% of all respondents said they want access to peer support teams to cope with these consequences of their duties and help eliminate the stigma of seeking help.

Marsar joined the Bellmore firehouse in 1987 before he was hired by the FDNY in 1990. In 1994, he was trained as a peer support counselor for the FDNY Counseling Services Unit and joined the then-burgeoning Nassau CISM team a couple years later. During the '90s, he recalled a 16-month stretch where he was called to firehouses across the city for the deaths of 14 firefighters.

"The fire department is another family ... so losing a fellow firefighter is a horrendous thing," Marsar said. "I saw how much these people were hurting, and then after applying the traumatic stress counseling techniques, I saw them change. ... It was like a big weight was lifted off their shoulders."

When Marsar was promoted to a lieutenant in the city following the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he continued his peer support work in Nassau County.

During his tenure, the county’s CISM team changed its approach to supporting struggling firefighters and EMTs following research that suggested more intrusive aspects of a debriefing, such as asking first responders to recall the worst part of a call, could be retraumatizing.

Now, Marsar and his team focus primarily on listening to the struggles of those willing to share, from hypervigilance to inability to eat or sleep, so their fellow first responders recognize they are all going through "normal reactions to an abnormal event," he said. The team then provides insights into how trauma may continue to impact them, and how they can cope.

Marsar incorporates mental health into introductory firefighting and advanced officer classes he teaches at the Nassau County fire and EMS academies.

"When he and I teach, I let him take that portion ... he emphasizes that we need to look out for each other," Robert Leonard, the second deputy chief instructor at the Nassau County Fire Service Academy, said after cheering on Marsar Tuesday morning. "His compassion ... for their mental health is exemplary. He’s a very knowledgeable person who’s always expanding his knowledge base, he doesn’t stay stagnant."

While Marsar has not conducted peer support sessions for many years with the FDNY, his expertise in the area has helped those under his command throughout his career, including the past six years serving Battalion 6, said Ariel Espinal, a fire lieutenant.

"To have that kind of experience retiring is devastating for the department," Espinal added. "His temperament was one-of-a-kind. It’s not all the time you find someone with the balance of leadership and being a people’s person."