{"id":272633,"date":"2019-05-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-06T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/pbms-student-presents-firefighter-wellness-community-service-project-to-station-21\/"},"modified":"2019-05-06T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-06T07:00:00","slug":"pbms-student-presents-firefighter-wellness-community-service-project-to-station-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/pbms-student-presents-firefighter-wellness-community-service-project-to-station-21\/","title":{"rendered":"PBMS student presents ‘Firefighter Wellness’ community service project to Station 21"},"content":{"rendered":"
A Pacific Beach Middle School student presented his community project on firefighter wellness to the firefighters at Station 21 on Thursday, May 2. Eighth-grader Kai Clark, 14, displayed two large boards; one with facts and information about the health issues firefighters face on a daily basis and one filled with messages of gratitude and thanks for the Station 21 crew.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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Clark said that he was inspired to do this project after he went on a tour of the station and did a ride along with the firefighters. It was there he learned that in addition to the life-threatening situations they\u2019re exposed to on a regular basis, they also face high rates of cancer (65 percent) and suicide (more firefighters die by suicide than in the line of duty).\u00a0<\/div>\n
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Rob Fox, a Station 21 firefighter, said projects like Clark\u2019s help bring awareness to the unique stress of this job.<\/div>\n
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“People don\u2019t realize that 90 percent of our calls are medical, with most of them happening at night,” Fox said. “So there\u2019s a lot of sleep pattern disruptions when you\u2019re doing that five, six times a night. It can really mess with your hormones, your heart, things like that.”<\/div>\n
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Because of this unpredictable schedule, Fox said that firefighters have to be extra diligent in taking care of their physical and mental health on their off days. After being a firefighter for 18 years, he\u2019s found that surfing, yoga, meditating and exercising really help.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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“It\u2019s all about finding something to calm you down so you can hit the reset button after your shift,” he said. “That\u2019s why we have 24 hours off. And sometimes, even that\u2019s not enough.”<\/div>\n
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He\u2019s hopeful that projects like Clark\u2019s will bring recognition to the reality of what firefighters go through \u2014 which is something even they hadn\u2019t always taken seriously.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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“Until people started to bring it to our awareness, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s something we really took into consideration,” firefighter paramedic Chris Brown told Clark after his presentation. “But these things you\u2019re looking into are really helping a lot of people. So thank you.”<\/div>\n
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Clark will present his community service project to a panel on May 20. For more information about PBMS\u2019 projects, visit\u00a0sandiegounified.org<\/a>.\u00a0<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Pacific Beach Middle School student presented his community project on firefighter wellness to the firefighters at Station 21 on Thursday, May 2. Eighth-grader Kai Clark, 14, displayed two large boards; one with facts and information about the health issues firefighters face on a daily basis and one filled with messages of gratitude and thanks […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":272634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"PBMS student presents 'Firefighter Wellness' community service project to Station 21","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}