"This will be a process, and this will be something that will affect our lives for the rest of our lives, said a shaken Mike Gobb, executive director of Blue Grass Airport, who along with many of Lexington's and the airport's first responders saw the carnage during the rescue and recovery effort of Comair Flight 5191.
The lingering effects, fear and depression, however, extend far beyond the horrific crash site to the family, co-workers, friends, friends of friends and people who didn't even know any of those lost on the morning of Aug. 27.
"I've already seen folks saying 'it was already hard enough for me to fly,'" Dr. Gary Patton, chief medical officer for St. Joseph's Behavioral Medicine Network, said of patients he was called in to talk with the day after the crash at Blue Grass Airport. Patton said people are often tentative to reveal such feelings in the wake of these types of tragedies out of fear they will be perceived as selfish and uncaring for the needs of family and friends of those lost, when in actuality "those ripple issues are very appropriate to address."
As Lexington returned to work a little more than 24 hours after Flight 5191 crashed, grief counselors were waiting, ready to help the tight-knit community deal with the realities of the accident.
Sarah Jarvis, a spokeswoman with Aramark, the parent company of Galls, a supplier of public safety equipment and uniforms that lost four employees on the doomed flight, said counselors were on site the day after the crash and would be available as long as employees needed them.
Jarvis said it was especially painful as three of the employees - Cecile Moscoe, Bobby Meaux and Erik Harris - were en route to New Orleans, where they would supply new uniforms to the police department just before the year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, just as they had in preparation for this year's Mardi Gras. The fourth Galls employee, Priscilla Johnson, was starting a vacation.
"When they say it's a loss in the family, it is a loss in the family," Jarvis said.
Though other workplaces in town weren't as directly affected and don't have to face the unoccupied cubicles that have become memorials to the lives of lost co-workers at Galls, there are other challenges facing the Lexington workforce as a part of the aftermath.
"It may take awhile for some of us to realize 'oh, that's the guy I would talk to on the phone,'" Patton said. And others may start to experience survivor's guilt with the knowledge that it just as easily could have been them aboard the 6 a.m. flight to Atlanta that many in the business community are well accustomed to taking.
"The thing that these events rob us of is that sense of safety and also that sense of predictability. Our lives are pretty predictable That forever changes, and in the smallest routine, suddenly nothing's predicable any more," Bob Blaylock, program director of the Employee Assistance Program at St. Joseph's BMN, said.
That holds true for almost every type of workplace loss, be it from accidental or natural causes, on-site or off.
"The investigation can be just as stressful and traumatic on the workforce in the aftermath of the incident," Blaylock said of workplace accidents. "Fingers get pointed, blame gets assessed; rumor control is just a huge part of it. Survivor guilt is huge, if an individual survives, particularly where there's been a fatality."
Seemingly unaffected offices have been taking steps in the weeks following the crash of Flight 5191 to ensure their employees are coping with the incident.
Nancy Norris, a spokeswoman based in Louisville for J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, said the company was offering counseling to employees following the crash much as it had following the late spring death of 22-year-old bank worker Stephanie Hufnagle, who was crushed by a falling slab of concrete from the building's parking garage.
"Whether it's a tragedy the magnitude of the accident with Stephanie Hufnagle, or frankly employees sometimes do die (in non-office incidents) and it affects their co-workers, we want to make sure that we have resources in place to help our employees," Norris said. "What's most important is companies being compassionate with employees, understanding, giving them the opportunity to talk through their grief, whether that's in a group or individually."
Chase always has counselors available to employees free of charge, and in cases such as May's parking garage incident, counselors come on-site and work is shifted elsewhere in the company to allow employees time to be together and deal with their loss.
Even though many companies don't have the global capacity of mega-bank Chase to temporarily shift work to another office, Behavioral Medicine Network counselor Blaylock warns employers not to overlook the needs of their employees for the sake of meeting contractual commitments.
"The long-term consequences of untreated exposure to trauma create a psychiatric condition called post-traumatic stress disorder, which is a very debilitating, chronic, ongoing disease and will impact productivity; it will impact attendance, (and) personal life. It wreaks havoc within the lives of employees," he said.
This is something Norris said Chase understands. "Yes, we do have work to get done, but the work doesn't get done without our employees, so it is beneficial to the company to take care of its employees," she said.
Failing to care for the needs of employees, be it after a large-scale tragedy such as Flight 5191 or much smaller personal issues, can lead to a disenfranchised worker or workforce.
"Human beings have a natural drive toward self-care. Frequently that can be misguided," Blaylock said. "If we don't - both the medical professionals and the management of companies - provide care for folks, they will provide their own, and it will frequently be in the form of self-medication," which is something Blaylock and Patton said they see on a daily basis.
"When handled well, a workforce can really become a much stronger, cohesive unit. A real sense of belonging can come out of it when addressed well," Patton said.
As the investigation into the circumstances that led to Flight 5191's demise continues and the scars of the crash site become obscured by nature, the emotional scars of those on the scene from early that morning must be healed too.
Scott Lanter, chief of the Blue Grass Airport department of public safety, said it will be a long process for his officers and firefighters. "They have (been talking to me starting on the day after the crash) and that makes me feel good; it's the person who doesn't talk, who just turns it off and puts it away (who later has problems)."
Some of the first responders were required to go through debriefing and meet with professionals before they were allowed to leave the airport on the day of the disaster, as is typical protocol established by FEMA and fire and police associations, according to Lanter and airport director Gobb.
Similar counseling will be available to all of the Airport Board's 85 employees and will also be extended to airline employees and others working in and around the airport.
Teams from other airports will send in responders to other air tragedies to help talk with Lexington airport employees, Blue Grass's director Gobb said. "While they are going through (the process) with mental health professionals, with counseling services, those are great, but there are so few aviation accidents involving large life lost. This isn't the same as a house fire or what typical rescue workers face. For the firefighters to sit down with someone who has faced the same loss, has faced the same tragedy, many times just one-on-one discussions really help," he said.
Beyond the help of professionals, Lanter said his emergency response teams will be able to take solace in each other. "Shift camaraderie and the stuff they do when they're at base, that's the glue that holds people together, and that's that stuff you fall back on when you have an incident like this," he said.