Medics: ‘Contact all the hospitals’

New EMT audio reveals chaos at Parkland shooting

As school staff rushed the injured to awaiting paramedics, rescuers struggled to navigate the jammed scene while also trying to prevent frantic parents from entering Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, audio recordings of the response to the mass shooting show.

All this occurred while they were uncertain of where the shooter was.

In the early moments after the Feb. 14 shooting that killed 17 and wounded another 17, responders knew they were facing many casualties and alerted county officials to send as many rescue units as possible to the school, according to the audio recordings released Thursday.

“This is going to be a big event … contact all the area hospitals,” a commanding paramedic said. “We may be sending patients in all directions … trauma centers especially.”

School staff, paramedics and police officers raced to get injured people out of the school and to awaiting ambulances.

One person had a gunshot wound to the head. Another was shot in the chest. One police officer, awaiting help, was with two patients: One with four gunshot wounds and another with two.

With uncertainty about where the gunman was, paramedics were told to

take cover while they also worked to find all of the injured.

“Command to all units on scene, the shooter is not down. The shooter is not down. I need you to make sure that you guys are secured behind vehicles,” a commanding paramedic said early in the response.

Their concerns included a backpack that might have an explosive device in it, which prompted a request for a bomb squad. An additional report of shots fired inside a school building was made after the gunman had reportedly fled. And paramedics were told that the suspect had run away from the school, mixing in with students that were running away, and was armed with a gun.

They effort to clear patients from the school continued an hour and 20 minutes later when it was reported that a suspect was in custody.

The audio does not include timestamps so it is unknown when exactly the events described occurred.

The Coral Springs-Parkland Fire Department released the recordings at the request of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Miami Herald and CNN. Previous releases of 911 calls and police radio communications revealed anxious and frenzied moments, as law enforcement officers searched for a shooter and those inside the school described horrific scenes.

Police say that Nikolas Cruz shot and killed 14 students and three adults after he entered the school in Parkland with an AR-15 rifle.

The latest audio records provide dramatic details about the chaotic scene that paramedics and police officers faced when they arrived at the school, including distressed parents racing to look for their children.

That caused a paramedic to call for police officers to form a perimeter around the school because “we have parents running in the building.”

“It’s an absolute mess,” a paramedic said of Pine Island Road, which runs in front of the high school. “It is completely closed down. [Police] need to clear out everything from the Sawgrass (Expressway) north because there is no movement there whatsoever … It’s a zoo. There’s no access whatsoever from the south.”

Requests for air rescue were denied because the gunman was still at large.

“They will not fly until they confirm that the active shooter is down.”

The new audio also showed communication issues between responding officers and paramedics, likely exacerbated by police radio system failures.

At one point officers started calling dispatchers directly because they could not get through to dispatch.

A dispatcher expressed frustration with the response of the Broward Sheriff’s Office, saying they had not released information about where the agency’s command post was located.

“We’ve been attempting to get this information repeatedly and do not know,” she said.

Broward Sheriff’s Office personnel have been criticized for how they handled concerns about Cruz before the shooting and how deputies responded at the school.

School resource officer Scot Peterson was disciplined and resigned after he stayed outside of the building during the shooting, instead of going in to confront the shooter. He later said in a statement he didn’t go inside the building because he thought gunfire was coming from outside.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, at the direction of Gov. Rick Scott, is investigating the law enforcement response to the shooting.