By Valeria Wigglesworth
The Dallas Morning News
FORT HOOD, Texas — Billy Rhoads didn’t think twice as he grabbed his flak jacket and radio and rushed to the scene at Fort Hood.
But the fire chief for the nation’s largest military base said his 26 years on the job couldn’t prepare him for what he saw.
“You can train all day long to handle mass casualty incidents,” he said Tuesday. “What you can’t do is be prepared for what you’re going to see when you pull up on something like this.”
Rhoads’ staff at the Fort Hood Fire Department and colleagues from neighboring Killeen and Copperas Cove are still dealing with the effects more than two months after the Nov. 5 shooting rampage that left 13 dead and nearly three dozen wounded. Counseling is available as needed.
“The aftermath will go on for a long time,” Copperas Cove Fire Chief Mike Baker said.
Rhoads and Baker, along with Killeen Fire Chief J.D. Gardner, spoke to hundreds of firefighters and emergency medical service personnel gathered in Frisco this week for a leadership conference put on by the Texas Engineering Extension Service.
They told the attentive crowd that they couldn’t talk about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who’s been charged in the case, because the investigation is ongoing.
But they did talk about what went right that day.
Emergency crews transported 32 patients in 43 minutes, an astounding feat that Rhoads said was made possible by the soldiers on the base.
“There was not ... a person on the ground who was wounded that was not already receiving medical care, and that was by another U.S. Army soldier,” Rhoads said. “They were in a combat situation, and they knew it.”
Tables with their legs kicked off were used as backboards. Airways were cleared. Tourniquets were applied.
And as false reports of a second shooter spread, these soldiers didn’t leave their victims but lay on top of them to protect them “because that’s what soldiers do,” Baker said.
The three fire chiefs said they had been meeting monthly with other chiefs from Central Texas to share information and talk about “what ifs.” That coordination and relationship building became invaluable when the crisis hit.
Another mass casualty incident may never happen at Fort Hood, Baker said.
“It may not happen in your town,” he told attendees. “But it’s going to happen again. We all have a duty to be ready.”
Copyright 2010 THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS