Vegas shooting survivors’ gift of gratitude

LAS VEGAS: Emergency room workers insisted they were just doing their jobs on that tragic October night, as survivors of the mass shooting in Las Vegas expressed their gratitude with tears and gift baskets.

The survivors, who stopped at the emergency room west of the Las Vegas Strip, are part of a group meeting this week with first responders at hospitals, fire and police stations and other sites to hand out gift baskets as a gesture of appreciation.

The survivors, some of whom travelled from Colorado and California, raised over US$40,000 (RM163,000) to assemble 1,000 baskets.

Nurse Carolyn Hafen, the director of the emergency room at Spring Valley Hospital, choked up on Friday as she thanked the survivors in the same waiting room that two months earlier had seen chaos as patient after patient arrived. The facility treated over 50 victims.

“We don’t need a thank you. This is what we signed up to do,” she said. “It was an honour to be able to help in any way that we could.”

On Oct 1, a high-stakes gambler killed 58 people and injured hundreds more after shattering the windows of his hotel suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel casino and unleashed gunfire at a crowd of 22,000 people gathered at the Route 91 Harvest music festival below. He then killed himself.

Emergency rooms were inundated with patients, some dropped off by emergency personnel and others by Good Samaritans.

Outside the break room of the Spring Valley Hospital ER, thank you notes are on a bulletin board that also says “Vegas Strong”.

One came from emergency personnel who responded to the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, while another was sent from a hospital that treated victims of the Virginia Tech shooting.

Denver resident Jenna Hutchins, who escaped the festival venue unhurt, said she found it “therapeutic” to help assemble the baskets.

“It’s an honour to be here in front of the people who were behind the scenes at that moment,” she said.

“Without these people, it would have been much worse.”