Hospital ‘like a war zone’ as victims flood in
When Dr Jay Coates pulled up to work at the University Medical Centre of Southern Nevada, the surrounding streets were cordoned off and ambulances filled with shooting victims lined the driveway. Inside, staff worked to evaluate and treat dozens of patients with high-velocity bullet wounds.
‘‘It was like a war zone,’’ said Coates, one of two senior surgeons who worked night duty as the city’s hospitals and emergency personnel struggled to keep up with the flood of victims. ‘‘We were just trying to keep people from dying.’’
At University Medical Centre, the state’s only level-one trauma centre, which means it is staffed around the clock, virtually every available employee was hustled back to work, to be confronted with unimaginable carnage.
Toni Mullan, a clinical nursing supervisor for the trauma unit, had just returned home after a 12-hour shift when she was called back. ‘‘Chaos, that’s what I saw,’’ she said of her arrival.
The most critically wounded sometimes had up to 20 people around their bed working on them.
‘‘It was a trauma bay full of at least 70 people and patients stacked everywhere. It was controlled chaos,’’ Coates said. ‘‘At one time, we had eight operating rooms going at the same time.’’
Last year the trauma centre had a training drill in which staff prac- tised receiving patients after a fictional mass shooting at a concert. ‘‘We were prepared for this,’’ Mullan said.
Across town, the scene at Sunrise Hospital was similar. More than 90 of the 190 patients had no identification.
Las Vegas police urged family members not to flood local hospitals in search of the missing, and telephone hotlines were set up to help people locate missing loved ones. - Reuters