The one-year anniversary of the largest mass shooting in modern U.S. history is Monday. 58 people at an open-air concert were killed. Hundreds more were injured. The University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, or UMC, treated many of these victims. KUNR’s Anh Gray checks in with a supervisor at the hospital for an update.
Toni Mullan is a registered nurse at the Trauma Resuscitation Center at UMC. It was a Sunday night, and Mullan was home after wrapping up a 12-hour shift when the phone rang. A colleague told her there had been a mass shooting and she needed to come back.
“For them to call me and tell me that, I knew that it had to be big because usually our staff is totally self-sufficient,” Mullan explained. “So, when I was driving in, I had my windows rolled down, and I do drive past the strip, and all I could hear were sirens and the magnitude of the event hit me then."
UMC is the only trauma 1 center in the state, designated to treat the most severe medical emergencies. That night, they treated more than a hundred patients. To mark the anniversary, Mullan says the hospital has some events planned.
“We are doing a community outreach called Stop The Bleed programs,” Mullan said, “and we’re also doing a community-wide blood drive.”
Stop The Bleed is a national campaign that trains bystanders to help victims in emergency situations. They learn skills like how to tie a tourniquet while waiting for help.
In the aftermath of the Vegas shooting, UMC received scrutiny over its handling of communications. An alert from UMC led a county dispatcher to inform emergency responders that the hospital was full when it wasn’t. It took at least 15 minutes to fix that error.
In a recent Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) report of the Vegas shooting response, released last month, the agency outlined about 70 lessons learned. The report pointed out that area police and firefighters experienced communication problems and failed to follow some protocols that night. It didn’t mention the communication issue at UMC. Hospital officials issued a statement indicating that since last year, they have instituted detailed communication procedures during high capacity emergencies.
