By Bill Carey
EMS1 Staff
ALLEN, Texas — The Allen Fire Department has released a timeline of the EMS response to the mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets that killed eight and wounded seven on May 6.
The 66-page analysis details the immediate actions of fire and EMS crews as the scene was developing. Allen Fire Chief Jonathan Boyd said that compiling an accurate report along these lines was a matter of combing through GPS records, interviews and communications with multiple departments, WFAA reported.
“We wanted to make sure all of it was released at one time so that it was completely transparent about our medical response,” Boyd said.
[REPORT: Allen Premium Outlets Mall Post Incident Analysis]
Boyd said the department has trained for mass casualty incidents and active shooter situations. The report details that from the start, within seconds of the first shots, dispatchers were flooded with calls.
The first call about shots fired at Allen Premium Outlets came in at 3:36 p.m. Within a minute the first medic unit was assigned and dispatch had noted the incident in its records as a “mass shooting.”
[RELATED: Rapid response: ‘Hope is not a plan’]
Within two minutes of that first call, that first medic unit was en route to the scene. Within three minutes, a second medic team was assigned to the incident and en route. Within four minutes, a fire engine was also on the way.
Police officers who had arrived on the scene first were already stopping the bleeding for many patients as medics pulled up. Allen firefighters and medics are trained to form Rescue Task Forces (RTF) in incidents like mass shootings. This allows police officers and paramedics to work together to provide care while a threat may still exist.
At 3:49 p.m. an RTF team reached the first patient. At 3:53 p.m. the first patient was on the way to the hospital and arrived at the hospital at 3:56 p.m.
“Every recoverable victim was saved,” Boyd said. “Those are tough decisions that the paramedics made as they were triaging the patients and deciding who they were going to be able to provide care for and who weren’t.”
Within 50 minutes, all gunshot victims who could be helped were transported to a hospital.
PREVIOUSLY: ‘We started running': 8 killed, 7 wounded in Texas outlet mall shooting