PUT NOT YOUR FAITH IN PRINCES: EMS first responder shares harrowing account of how botched Florida shooting response was.
“Everything I was trained on mass casualty events says they did the wrong thing,” he explained. “You don’t wait for the scene to be cleared. You go in immediately armed. Retrieve the victims. You can’t leave the victims laying there.”
“We were asking to go in. Asking the scene commander to go in. Why are we all standing around? Why are we not having patients to treat? Why are we not going into the building and retrieving these kids? The response every time was law enforcement did not clear the scene and would not allow medical personnel to go in,” he added.
The EMS worker believes that if he and other medical responders were allowed to enter the building as soon as they arrived, they could have saved more lives. He explained he was willing to risk his life to save the lives of others and was very frustrated over the situation.
The EMS worker stressed that he believes law enforcement made the decision they thought was best at the time, but emphasized that he believes it was the wrong one.
“They should have been more aggressive about getting the victims out,” he said.
Indeed. It’s difficult to understand how, seeing the results of their own inaction, there haven’t been mass resignations at the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.