Abstract
Prolonged disaster response scenarios present significant challenges to first responders yet remain underexamined with respect to resilience training and mental health interventions. The Champlain Towers collapse in Surfside, Florida, required extensive search and rescue efforts, involving collaboration between U.S. domestic and local teams and international first responders, representing the first time an international team contributed to search and rescue efforts on U.S. soil. Understanding the emotional and psychological impact of such operations is critical to improving first responder support systems. This paper offers a case study of the Surfside building collapse to illustrate the unique complexity of prolonged disaster response and, as such, inform best practice for both efficiency and wellbeing of first responders. This paper (1) reviews methods employed by first responders at Surfside aimed at offering emotional containment and fostering resilience, and (2) outlines methods for addressing gaps in the literature pertaining to how to best support first responders in the context of a prolonged call. The authors’ current ongoing research aims to inform a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of how to best support first responders in the context of a prolonged call to optimize the effectiveness of their response during the relief efforts and support their wellbeing in the aftermath. This ongoing research study aims to better understand how military-style resilience training and emotional support strategies, like those used by teams present at Surfside, may benefit civilian responders, and contribute to better disaster response frameworks.