Responders Detail Response to Orlando Shootings

June 15--Angel Colon and his friends were wrapping up a great night at Pulse nightclub when the shots began.

"We were saying our goodbyes. I'm hugging everyone ... and out of nowhere, we just a heard a big shotgun. We stopped what we were doing and it just kept going. We started running," Colon said.

Two days after the mass shooting, he was wheeled into an overfilled room at Orlando Regional Medical Center to share his story of survival.

"At first I was hesitant to come out here, because it's all so fresh for me," said Colon, surrounded by his siblings. "But I wanted to get my story out so everyone would know what is going on now in this community."

He was shot three times in the leg on Sunday when Omar Mateen took the lives of 49 people and injured 53 others with an assault rifle and a handgun.

"I tried to get back up, but everyone started running everywhere, I got trampled over. I shattered and broke the bones in my left leg," he said.

He realized that couldn't walk at all.

"All I could do was to lay down there while everyone was just running on top me of me trying to get where they had to be. And all I could hear was the shotgun ... people screaming, people yelling for help," he said.

By this time, Mateen had moved to another part of the nightclub, but Colon could still hear the shots.

"I thought I was a little safe by this time because I thought it's giving everyone time to tackle him and get him down. But unfortunately, I hear him getting back and shooting everyone that's already dead on the floor, making sure they're dead," he said.

"I was able to peek over and I could just see he's shooting everyone. I could hear his shotgun get closer and I look over and he shoots the girl next to me. And I'm just thinking I'm next. I'm dead," Colon said.

Mateen tried to kill Colon, too -- but those bullets hit him in the hip and hand.

"I had no reaction. I was prepared just to stay there, laying down so he won't know that I'm alive," said Colon, who two years ago tattooed the phrase "Live for the Moment" on his arm.

Shortly after, Mateen got into a gun fight with the police and retreated into the club, and began a three-hour stand-off.

By then, Dr. Christopher Hunter, associate medical director for Orange County EMS, had received a text message about a multiple casualty event involving more than 20 patients with gunshot wounds.

"First text message sounded so surreal," he said. But he quickly confirmed that it was happening.

Using the emergency management system, he notified the hospitals and began orchestrating EMS activity in the field.

Dr. Chadwick Smith, the trauma surgeon on call that night, got a call from an emergency room resident telling him of multiple gunshot wounds.

He had already had a busy day. He had admitted 21 patients and performed four operations. But those numbers were about to rise more rapidly than he expected.

Out in the field, the emergency responders were loading patients into ambulances and civilian cars and transporting them to the hospital, which is only a few blocks away from the nightclub.

A police officer had dragged Colon out of the club, his body getting cut with shards of glass on the ground.

"And we get across the street and I look over and there are bodies everywhere, they're all in pain," he said. "We were able to get to the ambulance and they brought us over here."

It only took a few minutes before the patients started arriving after Smith got the call.

"One came, then another came, then another came," Smith said on Tuesday.

He started calling other surgeons.

"I said that this is not a drill. This is not a joke. Twenty-plus gunshot wounds are coming in. I need you here as fast as you can. And every time the answer I got was I'll be right there," said Smith.

Nurses arrived too, even those who weren't on call.

"The toughest thing was hearing them scream," said Meagan Noblet, a registered nurse who cared for Colon that night. "They weren't worried about themselves; they were worried about their loved ones."

The voices, she said, still keep replaying in her head.

There was full gamut of gunshot wounds, from wounds to the extremities to wounds to the chest, abdomen, pelvis and the head.

"The amount of destruction wasn't something that we were as used to seeing," said Dr. Joseph Ibrahim, the trauma medical director.

"We're used to seeing multiple injuries every single night but this was somewhat of a surreal experience. We would walk from operating room to operation room and do it again and again," said Dr. William Havron, the general surgery program director at Orlando Health, the parent company of OMRC.

The environmental staff quickly cleaned out the bloody towels, the needles, the beds, preparing the area for the next patient.

While the hospital staff wheeled patients in and out of operating rooms, the police standoff continued at Pulse nightclub.

But that was about to end.

"At this point we had used everything in the ED," said Smith. So more supplies were sent from Arnold Palmer and Winnie Palmer hospitals.

"Then we got word from OPD that there will be another 20 to 25 patients injured and that's when the second wave started to come. We got some of the patients from the first wave out of operating room to the intensive care and started doing all over again," Smith said.

Nine of the 44 were so severely injured that they died shortly after arriving at the hospital.

Doctors at ORMC had performed more than 36 operations by Monday night and were planning to do eight more on Tuesday.

Twenty-seven victims of the Pulse shooting remain at ORMC. Six are in critical condition, and the death toll could go higher in the coming days, said Dr. Michael Cheatham, chief surgical quality officer for ORMC.

Five other patients are in a guarded condition and 16, including Colon, are stable. Another six are at Florida Hospital Orlando.

"You can never prepare for a disaster like this," Cheatham said. "It's the largest we could have imagined, but we were never at want for anything because of everyone's support."

nmiller@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5158

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