The Orlando Fire Department had been working on a plan to respond to a mass shooting. It had even purchased vests filled with tourniquets and special needles to relieve bleeding in the chest. But at the time of the Pulse nightclub shooting, the plan had already sputtered and the vests sat untouched.
This article was produced in partnership with WMFE, which is a member of the
鈥淚 need the hospital! Please, why does someone not want to help?鈥�
The man鈥檚 screams inside the Pulse nightclub pierced the chaos in the minutes after the shooting stopped on June 12, 2016. With the shooter barricaded in a bathroom and victims piled on top of one another, Orlando police commanders began asking the Fire Department for help getting dozens of shooting victims out of the club and to the hospital.
鈥淲e need to get these people out,鈥� a command officer said over the police radio.
鈥淲e gotta get 鈥榚m out,鈥� another officer responded. 鈥淲e got him [the shooter] contained in the bathroom. We have several long guns on the bathroom right now.鈥�
A few minutes later, the shows the police formally requested the Fire Department to come into the club. 鈥淲e鈥檙e pulling victims out the front. Have FD come up and help us out with that,鈥� one officer said.
The Orlando Fire Department had been working on a plan for just such a situation for three years. Like many fire departments at the time, Orlando had long relied on a traditional protocol for mass shootings, in which . The department had tasked Anibal Saez Jr., an assistant chief, with developing a new approach being adopted across the country: Specialized teams of medics, guarded by police officers and wearing specially designed bulletproof vests, would pull out victims before a shooter is caught or killed.
After a recommendation from Saez in 2015, the department and helmets. The vests had pouches filled with tourniquets, special needles to relieve bleeding in the chest, and quick-clotting trauma bandages.
None of that equipment was used at Pulse. Emergency medical professionals stayed across the street from the club. And the bulletproof vests filled with life-saving equipment sat at headquarters.
In the three and a half years before the shooting, bureaucratic inertia had taken hold. Emails obtained by WMFE and ProPublica lay out a record of opportunities missed. It鈥檚 not clear whether paramedics could have entered and saved lives. But what is clear is Saez鈥檚 plan to prepare for such a scenario sat unused, like the vests.
His effort had sputtered and was ultimately abandoned after a new fire chief, Roderick Williams, took over the department in April 2015. Williams named another administrator to finalize and implement the new policy. That administrator declined multiple requests to comment for this story. Saez said he offered to help but never heard back.
鈥淭here was a committee that was responsible for the [policy], however, I am not sure whether one was created and approved,鈥� .
In April 2016, two months before Pulse, Williams emailed his deputy chiefs asking for a progress report: 鈥淯pdate on Active Shooter?鈥�
The only response was an email asking if anyone had responded. No one did.
Ultimately 49 people died during the Pulse attack, one of the worst mass shootings in modern history.
Saez, a 30-year veteran of the Orlando Fire Department, a paramedic and a member of the bomb squad, has been haunted by the possibility that things didn鈥檛 have to turn out the way they did. 鈥淚 wonder sometimes if I should鈥檝e done something else,鈥� he said in an interview.
鈥淚n my mind I鈥檓 thinking, 鈥楳an, if I would have had that policy, if I could have got it done, if I could have pushed it, maybe it wouldn鈥檛 be 49 dead. 鈥� Maybe it would be 40. Maybe it would be 48. Anything but the end result here,鈥欌�� he said.
A in the journal Prehospital Emergency Care concluded that 16 of the victims might have lived if they had gotten basic EMS care within 10 minutes and made it to a trauma hospital within an hour, the national standard. That鈥檚 nearly one third of victims that died that night.
鈥淭hose 16, they had injuries that were, potentially were survivable,鈥� said Dr. Edward Reed Smith, the operational medical director for the Arlington County, Virginia, Fire Department, who reviewed autopsies of those who died with two colleagues. Smith, whose department was one of the first in the country to allow paramedics into violent scenes with a police escort, has reviewed more than a dozen civilian mass shootings using the same criteria. 鈥淗ow would they be survivable? With rapid intervention and treatment of their injuries.鈥�
A separate Justice Department review last year 鈥渋t would have been reasonable鈥� for paramedics to enter after 20 minutes, a different time frame from the one Smith analyzed.
Orlando鈥檚 mayor, as well as the Police and Fire chiefs, dispute that they could have done anything differently. They say it was impossible to know at the time that there was only one shooter at Pulse or that he wouldn鈥檛 resume shooting after he barricaded himself in the bathroom. It was also impossible to know whether a bomb threat he later made was real. All of that, they say, would have kept victims from getting care in time.
Williams, the fire chief, said he still believes the inside of Pulse nightclub was a 鈥渉ot zone,鈥� or a place of direct threat, which would have stopped first responders from going in.
鈥淲e鈥檙e not prepared to go in hot-zone extraction. That鈥檚 just not what we do as a fire department,鈥� Williams said. 鈥淚t was active fire, active shooting.鈥�
But not everyone who responded that night is sure the Fire Department had done all it could. They say some victims might have had a chance had Orlando finished what it started.
Orlando Fire District Chief Bryan Davis was in charge of his agency鈥檚 response the night of the Pulse shooting. In an interview, he said his department had done active shooter drills, but it wasn鈥檛 enough.
鈥淲e didn鈥檛 have formalized training,鈥� Davis said. 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 have a policy. We didn鈥檛 have a procedure. We had the equipment [bulletproof vests]. But it was locked up in EMS in a storage closet 鈥� And unfortunately, we were a day and a dollar too late. 鈥�
鈥淎 Wake-Up Call That, for Us, It Can Happen Anywhere鈥�
Just after midnight on March 18, 2013, a former University of Central Florida student pulled a fire alarm in a building that housed 500 students.
He was armed with a rifle, a handgun, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and four Molotov cocktails. Three minutes later, a person in Room 308 called 911: His roommate had pointed a rifle at him.
When police entered the room, the would-be shooter was dead. After his rifle had jammed, he killed himself with his handgun.
Police found handwritten notes
鈥淭hat was a near miss and that was certainly a wake-up call that, for us, it could happen anywhere,鈥� said Orange County Fire Rescue Chief Otto Drozd, whose agency helped respond to the scene. 鈥淓verybody is susceptible.鈥�
That year, Orange County, where Orlando is located, started holding department-wide training sessions on how to respond to such situations. It also wrote a new policy that said paramedics, guarded by sheriff鈥檚 deputies, should provide aid to victims after a shooting ends, but before a perpetrator is caught or killed.
Also in 2013, the city of Orlando Fire Department assigned Saez, an assistant chief, to create its active shooter policy.
Saez said he began by using the policy adopted by Arlington County as the backbone of his draft but stopped when he learned that another group within the Fire Department also was working on the project. When he tried to merge the two groups together, he was instead told that the other group would handle the policy.
鈥淭hey were, for lack of a better term, a little gun-shy about how aggressive we were gonna get,鈥� said Saez, who goes by JR, drinking a pint of craft beer through a grey goatee and wearing a Five Finger Death Punch T-shirt. 鈥淭hey started saying 鈥楬ey, JR鈥檚 crazy.鈥欌��
Then, in 2015, as the FBI was planning a major drill with public safety agencies, Saez said he was again asked to take the lead on the policy. At the time, Fire Chief John Miller was in the process of retiring and Williams, a longtime veteran of the department, had been named to succeed him.
鈥淭he whole active shooter thing, it wasn鈥檛 rocket science, it was common sense,鈥� said Saez, who had a reputation for being blunt.
In March, Saez wrote an email to a group of firefighters, including the incoming chief and other high-level administrators as well as medics, 鈥淟ooks Like I got a Dream Team for this Active Shooter Exercise.鈥� , he laid out a timeline for getting the policy finalized and an active shooter exercise done in April. He said he was choosing which bulletproof vests and equipment to buy and hoped to train the entire department by the end of the year.
But within a month, Williams was sworn in as fire chief and Saez was sent back to work in a fire station. (Such personnel changes are common when a new chief takes over.) The active shooter policy was given to another administrator.
Two months later, the city of Orlando鈥檚 emergency manager sent an email to Williams and other members of the Fire Department鈥檚 administration calling their attention to a Department of Homeland Security for responding to an active shooter. It recommended that fire personnel in bulletproof vests go into 鈥渨arm zones,鈥� places where victims may be but where a shooter is not believed to be, guarded by the police.
鈥淚t echoes our lessons learned and fixes,鈥� the official, Manny Soto, wrote, referring to the Fire Department鈥檚 previous active shooter drills, which included practices involving rescue task forces.
In July 2015, the city of Orlando spent $33,000 on about 20 bulletproof vests, according to purchase orders obtained by WMFE. Each vest could hold enough supplies to treat 10 to 15 patients. That was enough for each of the five district chiefs working on any given shift to equip a rescue task force.
The policy was never finished, though, and on June 12, 2016, the night of the Pulse massacre, the Orlando Fire Department policy told paramedics to stay three blocks away if they felt
鈥淭o Know That He Could Have Survived Would Be Horrific.鈥�
The gunfire started at 2:02 a.m. on Sunday, June 12, just after last call. A request for immediate assistance brought hundreds of officers from 15 police agencies across Central Florida. When the shooting stopped eight minutes later, Officer Brandon Cornwell of the Belle Isle Police Department and three other officers went inside the Pulse nightclub to kill or arrest the shooter.
They entered through a broken window in the front of the club. The club was dark, lit by pink and blue video screens and disco balls. There was no music playing. Unfinished drinks and unpaid bar tabs littered the tables.
As they got farther inside, a woman could be heard screaming over and over again, according to police body camera video of the scene reviewed by WMFE. Sometimes she screamed for help. Sometimes she just screamed.
The scene was so chaotic, police couldn鈥檛 figure out who was screaming.
鈥淲ho the fuck is this coming from!鈥� one of the officers shouted.
The team walked toward the gunfire and believed it had the shooter cornered in one of the club鈥檚 bathrooms. They pointed assault rifles and handguns at the doors and hallways to keep the shooter contained.
Officers then started bringing 14 incapacitated victims out of the club. Victims grabbed police officers鈥� ankles as they walked by, according to first responder recollections in the Justice Department report.
People 鈥� some dead, some alive 鈥� fell stacked on top of one another 鈥渓ike matchsticks.鈥� Some victims played dead. Phones rang and rang.
In the ensuing minutes, body camera footage captured the discussion between officers and commanders about getting help.
At 2:23 a.m., a police command officer tried to come up with a way to get paramedics inside. He asked if the shooter鈥檚 rounds could get into the main area 鈥渋f we start bringing FD to try to get some of these guys out of here?鈥�
The officer inside responded: 鈥淗e鈥檚 got a long gun, so yes, can penetrate,鈥� but then said that he was contained in the bathroom and that they had to get the victims out.
A few minutes later, the Orlando Police Department鈥檚 dispatch logs show the police asked for the Fire Department 鈥渢o go in scene secure,鈥� meaning dispatchers were asking the Fire Department to come into the club.
This is about the time the Justice Department concluded a rescue task force could have entered the Pulse nightclub.
Still, the Fire Department did not enter.
Orlando city officials downplayed the significance of the log, saying in a written statement that it only reflected the judgment of a 鈥渟ingle officer.鈥�
鈥淚n this type of changing situation, this was an isolated perspective and 鈥榮ecure鈥� did not mean the scene was 鈥榗lear,鈥� which is very important to distinguish,鈥� the statement said. 鈥淭his was still an active scene with an armed shooter and many unknown threats, like were there additional shooters or were there explosives.
鈥淎nd in fact, within moments, the suspect made the threat of explosives and pledged allegiance to ISIS. Shortly after this, there were also reports of a second shooting at Orlando Health and the hospital was locked down for approximately an hour.鈥�
At 2:50 a.m., the shooter threatened to blow up a city block with explosives in his car. Around the same time, the Orange County Fire Rescue Department, which had trained with the Sheriff鈥檚 Office beginning in 2013, brought 12 ballistic vests to Orlando Fire Department commanders on the scene.
Davis, the Orlando Fire Department district chief in charge of his agency鈥檚 response that night, said he told Orange County commanders that city firefighters and paramedics hadn鈥檛 been trained on how to use the vests 鈥� and wouldn鈥檛 use them. Davis鈥檚 account was confirmed by an .
In an interview, Davis said that while his department had done active shooter drills, those hadn鈥檛 been enough. In retrospect, he said he wishes he had asked the county firefighters to send a rescue crew into the club.
鈥淲hen that Orange County chief arrived, I would have looked at him and said, 鈥楬ey Chief, my guys are not properly trained in the use of those vests. Do you have individuals here that are?鈥欌�� he said. 鈥淎nd if so, then we utilize those resources that were properly trained 鈥� and we assemble them into the rescue task force and move them forward into the scene.鈥�
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said vests or no vests, commanders on the ground would not have told firefighters to go inside Pulse.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 think that scene was the appropriate place to do it,鈥� Dyer said. 鈥淲hether we had the policy strictly or not, I don鈥檛 think it affected the outcome at all.鈥�
While paramedics didn鈥檛 enter Pulse, some victims who had left the club managed to go back in to help friends.
Jean Carlos Mendez Perez made it outside the club after the shooting, but he realized his boyfriend was still back inside. He went back in to get Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, who everyone called Dani.
The couple was found by the entrance in the club. Wilson-Leon had wounds to his back, while Perez had wounds to his front. They both died.
鈥淚 think (Dani) was protecting Jean,鈥� Laly Santiago-Leon, Dani鈥檚 cousin, said.
Santiago-Leon says it鈥檚 heartbreaking to learn that the Fire Department put the policy on the backburner. She saId she hopes to never learn who the 16 victims with survivable wounds were.
鈥淚鈥檓 still, as I said, I鈥檓 still angry that he鈥檚 gone,鈥� she said through quiet tears. 鈥淏ut to know that he could have survived would be horrific.鈥�
Orlando Fire Department鈥檚 Leadership Didn鈥檛 Show Up During Attack
Fire and police agencies from across the Orlando region swarmed to the scene as word of the Pulse shooting spread. Initially, they each responded independently, but sometime in the first hour they established a mobile command center to coordinate their responses. The Orlando Police Department took the lead, but it was joined by two sheriff鈥檚 offices, as well as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI.
The Orlando Fire Department leadership wasn鈥檛 part of it.
According to department protocol, the fire chief was paged at 2:14 a.m. But the Justice Department鈥檚 report on how the police responded to Pulse until after the shooter was dead. There was no follow-up call to make sure the page was received, the report said.
Williams declined multiple requests to explain why he didn鈥檛 show up that night, but city officials have blamed it on a faulty paging system. The policy has changed since Pulse: Now, if the fire chief doesn鈥檛 answer a page in three minutes, he or she will get a phone call.
Dyer said he views what happened as a breakdown in communication, not a lack of leadership.
鈥淥perationally, it didn鈥檛 affect it,鈥� Dyer said, referring to the Pulse response. 鈥淚t just would have been better for the morale of the organization if the chief would have been on site.鈥�
Firefighters had their own command system, separate from the Police Department, whose chief was present. The two sister agencies didn鈥檛 even operate on the same radio channel, the type of challenge identified more than a decade earlier after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Justice Department report said the setup outside Pulse , coordination, and overall situational awareness.鈥�
Davis, the firefighter in charge of the department鈥檚 response, was four ranks below chief. Looking back, he said, he wishes that he or someone else in his department鈥檚 leadership had gone to the police command post.
Williams disputed the notion that being in the command center would have changed the department鈥檚 response or prompted officials to send in a rescue crew earlier. In a recent interview with WMFE, he said that training had been in place and that a rescue task force could have gone in if asked for.
鈥淭hose commanders on the scene made those choices,鈥� Williams said. 鈥淲e did exactly what was appropriate based on the resources that was required at the time.
But a month after the Pulse shooting, Williams gave a different response in an interview with WMFE. He said that his department was looking at active shooter protocols and vests, but that 鈥渨e haven鈥檛 trained to that level.鈥�
Smith, operational medical director for the Arlington County Fire Department, said if the Pulse nightclub shooting happened in his community, the response would have been different. With the shooter barricaded in a back bathroom, paramedics and EMTs would have put on ballistic vests and gone inside the club to pull victims out with a police escort.
While conceding that his assessment had the benefit of hindsight, Smith said the story of how Orlando responded to Pulse nightclub isn鈥檛 just about the lack of a rescue task force. It鈥檚 about the lack of communication between the Orlando Police and Fire departments.
鈥淭hey had two separate command centers that were, by the way, were on opposite sides of the club鈥� for part of the event, Smith said. 鈥淭he police commander couldn鈥檛 walk outside and walk over to the fire command because they had the club in between the two of them. So there鈥檚 no integration there.鈥�
According to Smith鈥檚 study of Pulse victims, out of the 16 victims who possibly could have lived, four died at the hospital. That leaves 12 who died either inside the club or in the triage area outside. It鈥檚 not possible to know how many of those died on the dance floor, where rescuers could potentially have reached them and provided aid, or inside the bathroom, where the shooter had barricaded himself and held them as hostages. It鈥檚 also not clear who would have survived if they had gotten help within 10 minutes of being shot. And for those who could have survived, it鈥檚 not clear how debilitating their injuries would have been.
Smith and his team , including one at a San Diego McDonald鈥檚 in 1984 and one at the Washington Navy Yard in 2013. In those 12 incidents, an average of 7 percent of victims died with potentially survivable wounds. According to Smith鈥檚 analysis, nearly a third of victims had survivable wounds at Pulse.
Both the fire chief, Williams, and the police chief, John Mina, have a simple response to those who criticize how the Pulse nightclub shooting was handled.
鈥淭he fact of the matter is those people weren鈥檛 there,鈥� Mina said of Smith and others who criticize the response. 鈥淪o they can鈥檛 say, 鈥業 would have done this鈥� or 鈥業 could have done this鈥� or 鈥業 should have done this鈥� because they weren鈥檛 there.鈥�
The city said the Police and Fire departments had nine joint training exercises between 2005 and 2016 on how to respond to an active shooter.
鈥淚f we had needed the Fire Department in there, we would have called them,鈥� Mina said. 鈥淢any officers were inside the club transporting the wounded directly to the fire department feet away to their triage center.鈥�
Mina later declined to comment further when asked about the dispatch logs showing that the that the police asked for the Fire Department to come to come inside the the nightclub. Dyer described those logs as a 鈥渞andom individual talking about that,鈥� which didn鈥檛 reflect the views of police the views of police leadership.
Pulse is no longer the worst mass shooting in the U.S. history. Las Vegas took the mantle last year. Just this year, Florida saw mass shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland and at a video game tournament in Jacksonville.
But Pulse changed the way many law enforcement agencies view the need for a rescue task force. Drozd, the Orange County Fire Rescue chief whose department brought vests to the scene, began working with the National Fire Protection Association to create a blueprint for how police and fire departments should work together to respond to active shooter incidents, which came out this year. He said he hopes fire agencies become more willing to enter 鈥渨arm zones.鈥�
鈥淭hat鈥檚 where as an industry we can do the most good.鈥�
鈥淚 Pray She Made It鈥�
Two weeks after the Pulse nightclub shooting, the upper echelons of the Orlando Fire Department called a meeting. The topic? 鈥淎ctive shooter project discussion.鈥�
Within 10 months, more vests were purchased, and ll firefighters had gone through a mandatory 16-hour rescue training course modeled off of the military鈥檚 approach to field medicine, reworked for civilians.. In April 2017, the mayor stood in front of a fire engine and donned a bulletproof vest with 鈥淔ire-Rescue鈥� written in big red letters on the front and 鈥淥rlando Fire Department鈥� on the back.
The point of the April 2017 press conference was to show off new equipment the city had purchased to help respond to future disasters like the Pulse shooting. Like the vests that had been sitting in the department鈥檚 headquarters on the night of the shooting, the vest Dyer modeled had pouches filled with tourniquets, special needles to relieve bleeding in the chest, and bandages.
Dyer and Williams also
鈥淪ince Columbine, all these different events happened,鈥� at the press conference. 鈥淲e realize a new norm somewhat, but our goal is to make sure our personnel is equipped to handle that new norm.鈥�
Dyer said vests and helmets, which cost about $118,000 would add a layer of protection if firefighters came in the line of fire. The city now has about 150 vests, enough for each firefighter working on a shift to have one.
Those vests could have been helpful in past events, he acknowledged: 鈥淐ertainly Pulse.鈥�
Neither Williams nor Dyer mentioned the vests and helmets sitting at the agency鈥檚 headquarters untouched at the time of the Pulse shooting. Nor did they mention the years of work on an active shooter policy that hadn鈥檛 been completed.
The active shooter policy adopted in April 2017 is just two pages long. It says that firefighters working at certain stations will be called into risky situations, operating as a rescue task force, and that all firefighters may be required to do the same.
Ron Glass, president of the union representing the Orlando Fire Department, said the new policy doesn鈥檛 have enough details for emergency medical professionals treating patients. He said if another Pulse happens tomorrow, 鈥渨e鈥檙e gonna do the exact same thing again.鈥�
鈥淲e have a three-inch notebook 鈥� on every type of house fire, every type of specialty, high angle call, below-grade call, extrication call, elevator extrication call,鈥� Glass said. 鈥淭he only thing that鈥檚 not in the book is 鈥� active shooters.鈥�
The Justice Department鈥檚 Community Oriented Policing Services office, which critiqued the police response to Pulse, has been commissioned by the Fire Department to evaluate its response.
That report is due out soon, and it could give needed closure about the department鈥檚 response to the Pulse shooting.
Saez, the assistant chief who had been charged with modernizing the department鈥檚 active shooter policy, was not on duty the night of Pulse. But when his wife, who worked for the Orlando Police Department, texted him that the shooting was the 鈥渇or deal,鈥� Saez remembers driving his hybrid Toyota more than 100 mph to get to the scene.
Saez worked with the arson squad and helped use explosives to breach the outer wall of the club before the shooter was killed. Afterwards, the police dragged a woman to him who had been shot multiple times.
鈥淎ll I could do was put my hand on her chest to hold pressure and pray, hope, fuck, I hope I did something,鈥� Saez said.
An ambulance finally did come and bring the shooting victim to the hospital. Saez doesn鈥檛 know what happened to her.
鈥淚 pray she made it,鈥� Saez said.
Saez has filed a hostile work environment complaint with the city of Orlando鈥檚 human resources department against his immediate supervisor and the fire chief. The city of Orlando said it is 鈥渃urrently reviewing the facts of this case as it is active and ongoing.鈥�
Saez said he thinks about the Pulse nightclub shooting every day, and feels responsible for not getting the active shooter protocol pushed through. He has a 鈥渟ick feeling in the gut.鈥�
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Are you a first responder with PTSD or stress-related symptoms you believe may be related to your work? Do you have a family member or close friend who is a first responder with PTSD or who has committed suicide?
Abe Aboraya covers health care for WMFE, an NPR affiliate in Orlando. This year, he is focusing on the toll post-traumatic stress disorder takes on first responders. Email him at wmfe@propublica.org and follow him on Twitter @wmfehealthnerd.
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