Deputy Fire Chief Details Vegas Response

Oct. 2--A barrage of gunfire erupted from one of the upper floors of the Mandalay Bay hotel a bit after 10 p.m. Sunday night aimed at a massive crowd attending a country music festival across the Las Vegas Strip.

After the gunfire and the ensuing stampede of over 22,000 people, at least 58 are dead and over 500 injured, including some critically who may not survive. Authorities say the gunman, who has been identified as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock of Mesquite, NV, took his own life in the 32nd floor hotel room from which he fired a high-powered rifle at the crowd. Police also say he acted alone.

The response to the incident was immediate from several agencies, including the Clark County Fire Department, which covers the famed Vegas Strip and was tasked with the vast portion of the medical response. With so many injuries in such a limited space, Clark County firefighters set up several triage areas to assess victims and determine who needed hospital transport.

"There were three separate divisions," Clark County Deputy Fire Chief Jeff Buchanan said in a brief interview with Firehouse.com. "There was a north division, a south division and an east division, and they were doing triage as best they could out of all those."

With reports of injuries numbering in the hundreds, one might think the public safety agencies were overwhelmed, but Buchanan tried to shed some light on the actual logistics of transporting victims out of triage.

"The reports you've seen, which I've also seen, are that there were over 400 injured, but most of those were self-transported. Most of those people got out of the area on their own or with the help of others. As a group, all of the agencies transported 142 of those injured. There was a wide array of injuries from life-threatening to very minor."

The quick response from Clark County firefighters began even before the 911 calls started pouring into dispatch. According to Buchanan, several off-duty members of the department were at the scene when the shooting began, and they immediately jumped into action to help the wounded.

"It's my understanding that they did the best they could to render aid inside the concert area and also to keep themselves safe," Buchanan said of the firefighters, who obviously didn't have all the equipment they needed at first when attending to injuries.

Buchanan says that in the last three or four months, Clark County firefighters have undergone mass casualty and mass shooter training alongside police agencies, but no amount of training could ever prepare first responders for witnessing the carnage of an incident like this. The senseless act is the worst mass shooter event in U.S. history, eclipsing the 49 people who were gunned down at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL, on June 12, 2016.

"Right now we're dealing with a significant amount of trauma to the entire organization," Buchanan said.