Helping the Pentagon cope

By Scott North

Herald Writer

When an arsonist began setting dozens of fires around Puget Sound nine years ago, Chuck Wright of Mill Creek went into the night to help others who were hurting.

Friday, he is scheduled to fly to Washington, D.C., and the Pentagon, scene of one of last week’s terrorist attacks, as a volunteer member of the American Red Cross national disaster team.

The mission will be familiar for Wright, a 57-year-old retired state Corrections Department supervisor and licensed mental health counselor and family therapist.

On Thursday, Wright was handed a plane ticket and told to head to the nation’s capital. He expects to spend up to three weeks trying to meet the mental health needs of those now wrestling with the carnage left when terrorists crashed a hijacked jetliner into the sprawling Pentagon building, killing 188.

Since the terrorist attacks, people with Wright’s expertise have been working with Pentagon burn victims and relatives of people who died. They also have been trying to assist police, firefighters, military officials and others who are picking through the rubble, searching for evidence and missing people.

The trauma of continually confronting ugly sights, smells and tragedy "is really sinking in big time with these men and women, who have put their mental health on the line for the United States," Wright said.

Wright knows the territory. He served as a member of the Sno-King Arson Response Team, the task force that in February 1993 captured Paul Kenneth Keller, one of the nation’s worst serial arsonists. The arrest capped a grueling investigation that lasted six months and brought task force members to more than 100 burning homes, churches and businesses spread out across four counties. Keller is now serving a virtual life sentence after pleading guilty to setting dozens of fires, including some that resulted in deaths.

Wright was assigned to help the Snohomish County residents deal with their grief. In time, many of the task force members — the firefighters, detectives and federal agents — turned to Wright for help in putting the ugly experience behind them.

Wright has continued to specialize in that work. He is on the team that responds in Snohomish County to what are known as critical incidents, a clinical way to describe the ugliest accidents, crime scenes, suicides and mishaps. He has assisted in debriefing police officers who have watched colleagues die in the line of duty; firefighters who have recovered the charred bodies of burn victims; and paramedics called to suicides involving children.

He also joined Families and Friends of Violent Crime Victims, a group that works closely with people whose lives have been marred by violence. Wright is president of the group’s executive board.

The Pentagon "is a major crime scene," he said. "I’m going there as a victim advocate, too."

The Red Cross last week sent Wright to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to talk with people who were stranded after the terrorist attacks temporarily shut down air travel. He counseled flight attendants troubled by returning to the skies, among others.

The people Wright spoke with were fearful and struggling with a grief that has "not only penetrated our basic soul, it has penetrated our hope for America, and our view of America as being a land of safe travel."

You can call Herald Writer Scott North at 425-339-3431

or send e-mail to north@heraldnet.com.