HERO MEDIC FIRST ON THE SCENE OF CARNAGE
Nothing prepared this heroic paramedic for the scenes of utter carnage he found in that foyer just after the bomb went off. Or, as he describes here for the first time, how he had to steel himself to...
THE first paramedic to arrive at the Manchester Arena bombing recalled last night hearing ‘screams from all directions’ as he entered a foyer full of the dead and dying, including children.
Nothing in his training could have prepared father-of-three Paddy Ennis for the carnage he would witness as he reached the blast zone.
But fighting his instincts, the paramedic had to ignore those casualties who were pleading for help because, however horrific their injuries, their airways were clear and they could breathe.
‘The quiet ones were my first priority,’ he said. ‘Many others, tragically, were beyond any help.’
Paddy, 38, an advanced paramedic with the NHS North West Ambulance Service, was racked with emotion as he gave his account of the events. He told how the devastating scale of the bloodshed slowly dawned on him with each step he took towards the arena foyer where suicide bomber Salman Abedi blew himself up on Monday evening.
Because of fears of another device, Paddy and two colleagues who arrived later were the only paramedics allowed into the ‘hot zone’ where the bomb was detonated.
As Paddy put it: ‘It was worse than any of us could have imagined.’ PADDY was on duty at Central Manchester Ambulance Station when the first calls came in shortly after 10.30pm.
He said: ‘It was already a busy evening. Then all of a sudden the screen displaying those calls just lit up with alerts saying the same thing – “Manchester Arena”. The only one I saw said, “Explosion.”’
Paddy jumped in his ambulance car and, slipping behind a police car with its lights flashing, headed for the arena, just over a mile away.
‘All the way there I was trying to prepare myself mentally for what this could be, but as I got closer to the arena there were large crowds of people who seemed remarkably calm. When I saw their demeanour, I began to hope this was not going to be a serious incident after all.’
However, any such optimism dissipated as he approached Victoria Station, which has a link to the arena: ‘I could see the mood of the crowd was different, partly from the speed at which they were moving. There was a level of panic, but it still didn’t alert me to how horrendous the scene was going to be.
‘I was directed by police towards a group of four or five people who were clearly injured. They were saying they thought they’d been shot or there was an explosion, and their injuries were consistent with either scenario.
‘Then I could hear myself being shouted to by another group of people 20 or 30 yards closer to the station and the arena. The injuries were similar – lacerations possibly from glass or shrapnel to arms or legs, but thankfully without massive haemorrhages or underlying fractures, chest or abdominal injuries.
‘It was a really rapid assessment: checking they were conscious, breathing and that their pulse rate was within an acceptable limit. But my brief assessment told me they were walking wounded. Presumably that’s why they were able to get so far away from the station in such a small amount of time. At that point I realised there would be at least 10 casualties so I radioed my control to say this was a potential major incident.’
Paddy admits he had no idea what he was walking into.
‘I reassured the people I saw that I would be back or my colleagues would be coming behind me, and as I made my way out further towards the building entrance, I was met by people sitting down.
‘They had more serious injuries but incredibly they had been able to make their way down there, presumably on pure adrenaline.’
But with each step it began to dawn on Paddy that the closer he got to the arena the more severe were the injuries he was encountering. As he feared, the worst was yet to come. ‘The police officers I met told me there were multiple serious casualties upstairs in the foyer and confirmed it was an explosion of some sort,’ he said.
‘While all this was going on, people were screaming and terrified, and as I got closer the degree of fear was far more palpable.
‘I made my way up the stairs. I was still the only paramedic there but I knew my colleagues would be coming soon. At that stage, I still didn’t have a handle on what had happened or where, or how many people were involved. Just outside the foyer there were some people with very, very serious injuries, consistent with a bomb – severe impact and shrapnel wounds to multiple parts of their body.
‘There were bystanders there helping them who were doing an incredible job. I learned later that these were ordinary people who had run into the scene to help. They were doing everything that could be done: stemming any blood loss, reassuring people and keeping airways open.
‘After a quick assessment of these patients I made my way in and that’s when the scale of the incident really came home. It was surreal to walk into that scene.
‘I’m an experienced paramedic and we have training for this kind of situation, but I don’t think you could ever be prepared for seeing anything like that. I certainly didn’t feel prepared for what I saw when I walked in there – just the scale of it was overwhelming. I’m sure there was a split-second when I took the scene in and froze, but there was no time for a thought process. I was just hit by a wave of devastation and then realised I was being shouted at. People wanted help.
‘There were people screaming in pain. But you have to ignore them because if they’re screaming, the airways are open and you know they can breathe, so you are reassured by the fact they are rela-
‘Tragically, some people were beyond help’ ‘It was surreal – the scale was overwhelming’
tively okay for now, although they had horrendous injuries. The first priority was the quiet patients and my initial assessment was there were around 10 who were not moving, but that changed as time went by. Unfortunately for some, my assessment was that they were beyond any help we could provide. They were already dead.
‘In any other situation there would be a massive ambulance response for each individual person. I had to make the very, very difficult decision that we needed to concentrate on the people who were critically injured because they could still be helped – the others could not.
‘There was a huge number of injured people, probably between 30 and 40 who were clearly injured or worse in that scene. But there were also a lot of people who I could tell were professionals and I was incredibly reassured to see them – police officers, first-aid staff and medics who had been at the event, along with the event security staff. People had improvised tourniquets, in some cases using belts or T-shirts to stem the blood.
‘The next person on scene was my colleague, consultant paramedic Dan Smith, and there couldn’t be anybody better to arrive.’
But because the police feared other bombs or attackers, Dan and other paramedics who were arriving were not allowed into the ‘hot zone’ where Paddy was.
Two colleagues from the Hazardous Area Response Team (HART) were allowed through after a time.
‘I cannot tell you how grateful I was to see them,’ Paddy said. ‘This is what their unit was designed for, so they came in with the equipment for full major incident triage’.
‘I can’t tell you how long it took for everyone to be moved but when they had been, there was just an eerie silence. It was a very strange and awful experience. It’s really difficult to express how awful it must have been for everybody who was there.’
Now back at home with his wife Lucy and three sons, Paddy has tried not to dwell on what he saw. It’s clear that even this interview has been a harrowing experience for him. ‘I have struggled the past few days,’ he added. ‘The fact that people were so young and the attack was so senseless. Those are my abiding thoughts.’