Paramedics barred from saving Orlando shooting victims because club was deemed too dangerous

46Young

Level 25 EMS Wizard
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EMS has no business going into a hot zone. LE needs to clear your area, make it a warm zone, and then bring EMS in.

We carry special kits with 5 tourniqets, 5 chest seals, 5 tension pneumo kits, 5 hemostatic gauze, 5 npa's, 5 compressed bandages, and that's about it. We get ballistics gear as well.

Going into a hot zone as EMS is just dumb. The LEO's need to babysit you, and you could get blasted as well.
 

Daniel G

Forum Crew Member
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Watch the Dallas footage of the cop getting flanked and blasted. If I was a gunman, id aim for medics. I learned that the hard way from Iraq
 

RocketMedic

Californian, Lost in Texas
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In the opposite thinking I understand that fire medics and fire crews pushed in under fire in Dallas to work on the officers shot, and get them out of the area.

Hell, there's a very fair chance that a sufficiently bold fire crew could actually facilitate extraction from the point of contact by using that gigantic fire truck as a rolling wall. That's something that's a lot harder to do with a house.
 

NysEms2117

ex-Parole officer/EMT
1,946
909
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EMS has no reason to be in a hot area at all. even outside, too many variables. Inside is completely out, with no discussion. Inside buildings you can only enter from certain points, which is much easier to focus on then 360 degrees. Maybe have EMS in the "in between zone" so LE can simply drag, and get them close enough for treatment, but no EMS should be going into a live fire scene. LE does not need to be babysitting somebody while getting shot at either.
 

Handsome Robb

Youngin'
Premium Member
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Homeboy was barricaded in the bathroom...most of the club wasn't a hot zone, it was a warm zone, where EMS should absolutely be operating with lethal cover.


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Chimpie

Site Administrator
Community Leader
6,368
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Homeboy was barricaded in the bathroom...most of the club wasn't a hot zone, it was a warm zone, where EMS should absolutely be operating with lethal cover.
I have not read the AAR for this. Was LE in the main part of the club while the suspect was in the bathroom? I was under the impression they were not.
 

Handsome Robb

Youngin'
Premium Member
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I have not read the AAR for this. Was LE in the main part of the club while the suspect was in the bathroom? I was under the impression they were not.

The way I understood it they were. If they weren't then I'd agree EMS should not be there.

From what one of our Tac guys told me the response/rescue operations were much better than the media has made them out to be.


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Bullets

Forum Knucklehead
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The way I understood it they were. If they weren't then I'd agree EMS should not be there.

From what one of our Tac guys told me the response/rescue operations were much better than the media has made them out to be.


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Interesting, at our most recent RTF training last month our lead instructor, a LEO, said they screwed the pooch in multiple ways, EMS response was one of them
 

zzyzx

Forum Captain
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I'm getting to this late, but I have to say that this article is such nonsense, and so are the opinions of the paramedics quoted in the story.

Along these lines, a paramedic recently wrote an editorial for the Washington Post advocating for paramedics to be trained to enter active shooter scenarios such as the Orlando night club:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...shootings-they-should/?utm_term=.930c4a2f0770

It's such nonsense because the only thing a shooting victim inside a hot zone needs is rapid extrication. There is nothing that a paramedic can do to save someone's life in the 1 or 2 minute it would take for a police officer to pull the victim out of a building. (Needle decompression? Really? Think about it.)

Why not just train the police officers that part of their primary mission in these incidents is to extract victims and take them to a triage area, rather than trying to make the scene safe for paramedics to enter. Perhaps they mistakenly fear that if you move a trauma victim you might cause them further harm.

All this is funny considering that not too long ago it was not uncommon for police officers to throw shooting victims into the backs of their cruisers and drive them directly to the hospital.
 

RocketMedic

Californian, Lost in Texas
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Homeboy was barricaded in the bathroom...most of the club wasn't a hot zone, it was a warm zone, where EMS should absolutely be operating with lethal cover.


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Strong, strong disagreement.

EMS's role in that is outside. "Lethal cover" is no substitute for safety.
 

Handsome Robb

Youngin'
Premium Member
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Strong, strong disagreement.

EMS's role in that is outside. "Lethal cover" is no substitute for safety.

Except with ballistic protection and armed officers around you you're safer than the vast majority of scenes we make on a daily basis. Especially knowing that the vast majority of active shooter incidents end within the first few minutes either before PD arrives or immediately after. Not all but the majority do.


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