They were supposedly helping while BULLETS WERE STILL FLYING!http://abcnews.go.com/US/paramedic-sear ... d=50334318When Joe DiGaetano showed up for his 24-hour shift as a paramedic coordinator at 7 a.m. Sunday morning, he was ready for anything, but expected it to just be another Sunday.
After a typical weekend day of paperwork, answering calls, and making some deliveries, DiGaetano and his team were settling in for the night.
“Everybody winds down around 9 o’clock. We go into the room, we take our boots off,” he told ABC News in an exclusive interview. Several members of the team turned on HBO and started watching a movie.
But at 10:08 p.m., the call came in: Reports of a "mass casualty incident."“When my phone rings, for serious calls, it rings differently,” he said.
In less than 60 seconds, he grabbed his radio off the charger and was on his way to the spot where Jason Aldean had just left the stage amid a hail of gunfire.DiGaetano is an EMS flip coordinator and has worked with Las Vegas Fire and Rescue for 20 years. The vehicle he drives into emergencies is stocked with various medical supplies, from bandages to medications that can “bring someone back to life after they’ve died from smoke inhalation,” he said. He is accustomed to walking into tragedies. He says he switches gears in high-pressure situations.
"You find ways to take emotion out of the emergency because when you show up, they want to make sure that they called the right guy who’s going to fix this, not a guy who’s going to be sad with them and be upset with them. They don’t need that, they’re already there."
DiGaetano says by the time he arrived at 10:20 p.m., four command centers had already been set up, and he reported to the southern command post at Russell Road and Las Vegas Boulevard.
“When I arrived, the shooting had stopped. It was still I would say a scene of chaos. We didn't know at any moment, any car driving toward us was that the bad guy getting away, was that a good guy or these people shot,” he said.
Amid the chaos, DiGaetano jumped in and immediately began triaging patients who had arrived at the center. He says when he arrived they immediately started filling the ambulances with the most critically wounded.
“We have a golden hour from the moment the trauma happens, the moment the surgeon gets to do his thing. There's an hour there where you really have a good chance of keeping these people alive. After that, it really goes down by a significant amount. It's like falling off a cliff.”...
As the EMS flip coordinator, DiGaetano’s vehicle full of supplies was critical to help the dozens of people with injuries. Around 11 p.m., he was called to the eastern command center, which ran along the eastern fence line of the concert on Reno Avenue.
“We get there and that's the area where people were coming out. They were jumping over the walls from the venue into the street and into a church across the street,” he said.
At 11:00 PM, people were still jumping over walls?
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He said the four teams were each given master keys and were instructed to sweep the entire hotel.
“We went from floor to floor, room by room and literally opened every door in the Mandalay Bay to make sure that entire hotel was safe.”
“Most of the rooms didn't have anybody in it, but the rooms that did, they identified themselves prior to entering. They get in there. The citizens were very thankful that they got that room searched because everybody was obviously scared.”
He said the four teams took several hours searching every one of the rooms in the hotel, from about the 13th floor all the way up to the Foundation Room on the 62nd floor -- skipping the 32nd floor, where Stephen Paddock, the alleged shooter, had shot concertgoers from his room. According to the Mandalay Bay website, there are 3,211 guest rooms in the hotel.After several hours of canvassing each room of the Mandalay Bay hotel, the teams had completed their assignment by about 5 a.m., Monday morning.
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She told him “she was actually going to be one of the people who had to take photographs of the people who didn't make it at the fairgrounds. That was her assignment. She wasn't looking forward to her day but like all professionals, she was ready for it,” he said. “She went to work and I went home.”
