By EMS1 Staff
MANCHESTER, England – The first paramedic to arrive at the scene of the Manchester terror attack said no training could have prepared him for the grisly scene.
Paddy Ennis, 38, said there were “screams from all directions” when he showed up at the Manchester Arena. He was forced to ignore victims begging for help in order to focus on the quiet ones, according to The Daily Mail, who spoke with him Sunday.
“The quiet ones were my first priority,” he said. “Many others, tragically, were beyond any help,” Ennis said.
Ennis arrived shortly after suicide bomber Salman Abedi detonated his device. He began treating the walking wounded, but police informed him there were more serious casualties inside.
The paramedic described the scene as “surreal” and “worse than any of us could have imagined.”
“I’m an experienced paramedic and we have training for this kind of situation, but I don’t think you could ever be prepared for seeing anything like that. I certainly didn’t feel prepared for what I saw when I walked in there – just the scale of it was overwhelming,” Ennis told the Mail.
The paramedic was presented to the Queen in Manchester, but has otherwise tried to deal with “very strange and awful experience” privately.