One year later, Nichole Notte hasn’t returned to her job as a firefighter. Post-traumatic stress disorder haunts her.
www.tampabay.com
June 28, 2022
It was the bang of roadside construction equipment along I-595 that did it. Suddenly, Nichole Notte wasn’t behind the wheel of her Jeep, she was back on the pile at Surfside with her search and rescue dog, Dig.
She could smell the dust of the crushed concrete and hear the shouts of her fellow first responders as they frantically — and fruitlessly — sifted through the rubble for survivors.
BEEP BEEP BEEP. Her forward-collision warning snapped her out of it. Notte slammed on the brakes, her suddenly tear-stained face bathed in the red brake lights of the car she nearly hit.
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A Broward Sheriff’s Office Fire Battalion Chief and longtime member of the vaunted South Florida Urban Search and Rescue team, Notte was the first person on the scene with a canine that morning at Champlain Towers South condominium.
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By her own assessment, she turned from a swaggering, veteran firefighter with confidence and ambition to a lonely, anxious person plagued with nightmares, panic attacks and a crippling identity crisis.
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When she first came home, Notte was supposed to go back to work within three days. She knew that wasn’t going to happen. As a battalion chief, she made difficult calls for a living. She was the one who decides whether to enter the burning building, and after Surfside, she didn’t trust herself to do that anymore.
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