GREENSBORO, N.C. — A community is still greiving, days after three young children died in a house fire in Greensboro.
Their families and friends are dealing with immense grief, but so are many first responders who were apart of that response.
Peer support specialists are helping them go through the grieving process.
Guilford Metro Master of Telecommunications and Peer Support Team member, Micahel Huntoon said what started as a loud room filled with dispatchers answering calls, eventually became quiet.
"We don't generally have calls like this one and it's heartbreaking it really is," said Huntoon. "Due to the nature of the call, we had so many calls that pretty much everyone in the room had taken a call from a neighbor."
Huntoon said he was called into work to step in and help support those working the day calls came in about the house fire, that later killed three children.
There was a shift in emotions in Greensboro firefighters as well.
In situations like this, Captain Justin Price, the Greensboro Fire and EMS Peer Support Coordinator, said the peer support teams step in to help first responders.
"In a call like that it becomes very serious, a lot of solemn faces, and it's a different feel about the incident," said Price.
They talk about what they heard, saw, and how they are feeling, so they can begin to process the situation.
"We do find some healing through talking about calls that are really tough, really traumatic calls, anything involving kids is really tough for us because most of us are parents and as soon as you see a kid going through something you think about your own kid, so a lot of times we do talk about it," said Price.
Both peer support teams said sometimes people don't like talking about it and it's why the teams continue to follow up days and even weeks later.
While it can be challenging to get through it, they all just take it one day at a time.
"As long as we can be there as a sounding board for our peers, i think that's all we can do," said Huntoon.