Two ends of that rifle
Assistant Fire Chief Larry
Haydu was off-duty at 10:16 p.m. Sunday when he got the text: 20 victims, active shooter, one officer shot and a mass casualty incident.
He texted his daughter who was at the concert. She lost her phone and never responded.
As he responded to the incident command post, he listened to the calls detailing the injuries.
“And I realized the gravity of this situation,” he said.”
Still struggling to get a hold of his daughter, he got a phone call from a Phoenix phone number. All he heard was screaming before the call dropped.
Eventually he got another call, and it was his daughter. She described to him the bodies as she stayed to help the injured, applying tourniquets made from shirts.
“She’s an amazing girl,” he said. “I don’t know how I got so lucky.”
The next day, he was assigned to the scene, where he stood near the same westside bar she was at the previous night. He looked up at the broken windows on Mandalay Bay’s 32nd floor, from where Stephen Paddock sprayed the crowd with bullets.
“On one end of that rifle, you had an evil person doing the most inhumane thing you could ever imagine,” Haydu said. “And on the other end of that rifle you had all these great people doing the most humane thing they could possibly do, risking their lives to save people they didn’t even know.” Road, Cassell said. First responders took more than 200 patients to area hospitals, he said.
Crews assisted with a wide range of injuries, Cassell said, including gunshot wounds; sprains, strains and fractures from people trying to climb over walls and escape; trampling injuries; and cuts.
Cooperation between police and the fire departments saved lives, Cassell said.
“We love our cops, and they love us,” Cassell said. “That paid off for us the other night.”
He said the victims calling about gunshot wounds caused the confusion that there were multiple shooters at multiple properties. Cassell praised people inside the concert venue who decided to help the injured, as well as the paramedics and first responders who risked their lives Sunday night.
“They performed wonderfully under fire, literally under fire, taking care of patients that were right there in front of them in a drastic, very bad situation,” he said.
Contact Blake Apgar at bapgar@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5298. Follow @blakeapgar on Twitter. Contact Mike Shoro at mshoro@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @ mike_shoro on Twitter.