Chaplains Offer Rescue Workers Comfort in Wake of Plane Crash

Pastor Dan Green’s voice is nearly hoarse from offering prayers and soothing words that he admits provide no spiritual clues as to why a plane of vacationing families splintered to bits, killing all 88 people on board. He has no answers for crews who spent 25 hours pulling human remains and wreckage from the water. Only comfort.

The 53-year-old Port Hueneme minister was among a handful of local pastors who set aside the business of their parishes and their own grief over the crash of Alaskan Airlines Flight 261 to comfort the local heroes: firefighters, police and harbor patrol officers.

He said his sermon Sunday, titled “Whatever it Takes,” underscores the importance of people supporting one another in times of crisis.

“I think it’s a fool that says God had a plan,” Green said. “That’s trite. That’s misinformation. When these accidents happen it brings to mind that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. It happens.”

Green, a chaplain with Oxnard’s fire and police departments and with the Port Hueneme Police Department, has been on call since his pager sounded at 5:10 p.m. Monday, summoning him to the Naval Construction Battalion Center at Port Hueneme where crews were unloading pieces of the wreckage.

“I knew immediately, when you talk about an airplane crash, that I was going to be overwhelmed with the need for support, so I called in the resources I have locally,” Green said.

Two hours later, Green had assembled six ministers at the Port Hueneme dock.

The pastors call their volunteer support “a ministry of presence,” because after a tragedy of this scope there is little more they can do than stand by, Green said.

This week, the ministers listened a lot. They said the responses to the crash varied among the workers. Some cried. Others refused to show emotion. No one left the scene early, no matter how difficult the job.

Pastor Lyn Thomas said that for some, the reactions to the tragedy will come later.

“This kind of thing will always come back and haunt you, no matter what,” Thomas said.

The trauma of the crash has affected those even peripherally involved in the cleanup.

One doesn’t have to see what is stored in the makeshift morgue at Wharf 3 at Port Hueneme or handle the luggage and the baby toys found at the crash site to understand the horror of it, Green said. The mood along the Silver Strand beaches and in the harbors is enough to communicate that.

Most crews worked 16 to 20 hours a day with few breaks for meals. Exhaustion frayed nerves.

After most of the wreckage was hauled in, workers started getting antsy. Some showed up to work when they weren’t needed to delay their emotional reaction to the crisis, Green said.

Ventura County emergency workers are accustomed to battling burning hillsides, rescuing freeway crash victims or surfers lost in churning seas, he said. But on Monday, everyone arrived too late.

“Firefighters are motivated by an incredible desire to save life,” said Thomas, 40, a Ventura County Fire Department chaplain. “This is an incident that has some built-in trauma factors, in that there were no survivors.”

Green said he is withholding his own tears until the families go home and the remaining wreckage is hauled in. Then, he and several other pastors will meet to grieve privately for a few days with counselors of their own.

“We cry among ourselves,” Green said.

Green and Thomas are among about eight local pastors who belong to the Critical Incident Stress Management Coalition of Ventura County, a group that also includes firefighters, police officers, hospital staffers and counselors who are certified to provide support during major crises.

They worked side by side with naval and Coast Guard personnel and staff with the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army.

For peace of mind during this difficult work, the ministers call home to check in with their families.

Larry Modugno, 55, a chaplain with the Ventura County Fire Department, said his year-old Labrador dog has comforted him. Green said that as his 18-year-old daughter left for school one morning this week, he hugged her a little longer than he would have on a normal day.

“I stood there holding my daughter in my arms,” he said. “And that was part of my way of dealing with this situation.”