Sandy Hook: Problematic EMS/LE response times AKA 9:40 final shot is bunk

Another question to all those saying ambulances couldn't go in: is it really protocol to stage one fire truck, and then a bunch of EMTs with no ambulances, but not ambulances?

All those guys over at the fenceline standing around shouldn't have had ambulances by them ready to transport?

It was safe enough for guys to stand around with zero cover, but guys inside ambulances would experience too much risk?

That's gotta be BS.

Another conflict between the agencies, if the apologists are true: CSP Keane allegedly tells someone to "have the FD block off the road." This is at 10:08.

At this precise moment, Newtown ambulance A2 relays Chapman's order to "call for everything."

Nute does NOT receive or transmit any order to "block the road." Instead, he issues a page that there are "medical emergencies." He calls for everything.

If Keane is really saying no further response is needed, how can Chapman have such a different opinion?

Keane is standing outside the building; Chapman has just been inside. Chapman has the handle on whether ambulances should be called, and he calls for everything.

Keane's order to block Dickenson is clearly because of the words he actually ends with: "...to get students out."

I.e. he is blocking *police vehicles* not ambulances.

The apologists' attempted dodges on all major points regarding the Sandy Hook response are indeed ingenious.

For example, they use the CSP's request to have the FD block Dickenson to try and say that the CSP was trying to block the entrance to the school parking lot. This is expressly NOT what CSP was trying to do. Keane, who broadcast that order, was trying to keep yet more CSP guys from clogging Dickenson--he wanted the FD, which was up by the intersection of Dickenson and Riverside, to keep Dickenson CLEAR so that, in his words, students could be taken out.

But what I meant to say was that these slimy dodges are exactly the kind of thing lawyers are good at. I am absolutely convinced the online apologists are working for the legal offices of the state of Connecticut.

Every one of those cops was trying, and trying hard, to do the right thing. Every one of those Newtown EMTs and paramedics was trying (how come no Newtown paramedics were used, btw? At least one Newtown medic was on scene WAY before the CSP medic).

But...no one established unified command. There was chaos as to who was in charge. You can hear Bob Nute at Newtown dispatch literally countermanding the CSP command's orders.

Who was the Incident Commander?

That has never been answered, other than to point out that it seems NO one was the incident commander for the first hour.

And that is not Unified Command.

Something's up w/gee-ell-pee today eh? Slow as mud (or are we bombing the Ukraine or something?)

THIS is fricking hilarious: "Dan Malloy for CT" just started following me on Twitter.

Or...maybe not that hilarious. Now that I think abt it for 2 seconds.

Here is a detailed explanation as to why the FBI is going around giving a new series of active shooter response trainings:

[link to www.fbi.gov]

If we could find a video or transcript of one of those sessions, it would be really helpful.

Wow.

Ck out this collection of steps various schools have taken post-Sandy Hook (could it be any clearer most were grasping at straws, without hard analysis and advice as to what improvements to choose?)

[link to www.schoolimprovement.com]

Candid information from Newtown police that never made it into Sedensky's report, somehow.

[link to www.firehouse.com]

"Newtown Police dispatchers "were quickly overwhelmed" during the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and the immediate flood of parents and media made it even harder for first responders at the scene, Police Chief Michael K. Kehoe said Friday...another problem in the early response to the school attack was the arrival of many ambulances from around the region.

"All the ambulances showed up, but they should have been managed better," Kehoe said..."

The article continues to make it seem as if the problem was too many ambulances; what the writer fails to understand, or perhaps Kehoe failed to communicate (though he came close) was that all those ambulances weren't on scene until 45min-1hour after the first 911 call.

..."Kehoe described the critical first hour of the response as "kind of chaotic" as police, fire and ambulances streamed into the town. "Our communications group became overwhelmed very quickly," he said, adding that only two people staffed the 911 call center that morning..."...law enforcement was overwhelmed; fire services were overwhelmed; our EMS was overwhelmed," Kehoe said."

Think about that last line: EMS was overwhelmed.

How does that jive with there being too much EMS and too many ambulances? EMTs standing around, ambulances idling? Certainly, that doesn't describe an overwhelmed EMS.

That contradiction is certainly an issue of timing. EMS was overwhelmed swiftly in the first hour of the call, but after that point, it became a matter of EMS overwhelming the scene.

"Hamden Mayor Scott Jackson, chairman of the commission, said the candid comments helped the commission.

"We all know that an after-action report is required and nothing ever goes perfectly," Jackson said. "Given the scope and scale of this, we know that everyone did not only their best, but better than their best. We know this in their hearts. But then to have them come back and say 'well, and here are a couple of things that you probably want to look at in terms of things that didn't go well,' that was a really powerful message."

A powerful message that never made it into 7000 pages of a report allegedly compiled to help understand mass shooting incidents and save lives. Not one mention, in those 7000 pages, of anything Kehoe alluded to.

Familiar name, commenting on another article (he left a comment on the first one, too):

"Mike Kehoe is a great guy, and he's working through a lot of things with this incident.

However, here's the thing - All "those ambulances" were requested through the police dispatchers, not from any EMS or Fire unit on the scene. Both Troop A and Newtown Dispatch called Northwest and South Central CMED's and said "send every ambulance you can", which is why you saw all these ambulances from the Lower Naugatuck Valley and elsewhere, and not ones like Stony Hill or Bethel from next door.

He is correct that it would be a good idea to manage all those ambulances, or for that matter the 300 cops that were there, the fire service is really the only discipline that is ready to manage large scale incidents. Just from a common sense standpoint, cops and EMS people are just not accustomed to pulling up to a scene and looking to the guy with the white hat for direction. From a global response standpoint EMS and LE need to get better at entering and operating within an Incident Management System, because those two disciplines rarely are involved with ICS on a tactical basis.


bernie"

[link to www.emtbravo.net]

"Bernie Meehan75 days ago
the irony here is that the two primary police agencies were the ones who called the regional CMED's and requested "any and all available ambulances".. It was not Fire or EMS who requested all the ambulances that were not needed. The Chief does have a point, that it is very difficult to blend EMS and Law Enforcement into an ICS since they almost never do it, while the fire service practices it every day."

I want to say right now, in case any of these guys end up coming here, that I do NOT think their response was bunk. The only thing that's bunk is the attempt to suppress information about what really happened. Beyond that, yes, the higher-ups need to figure out (still, apparently) who the hell is supposed to be IC in this kind of situation.

@Dinosaur's observation:

"Posted 05 March 2014 - 11:40 AM
I think we all need to get better at implementing incident management, not just police and EMS. First responders globally (to use your word) only implement a fraction of the entire process and to assert that police units should have been looking to a fire chief as IC "for direction" during an active shooter or potential hostage situation shows how much is wrong with the way we all interpret the process.

Speaking specifically about the little sliver of the globe that I used to work in, law enforcement actually does a lot of ICS. Much more than EMS. EMS is still paralyzed with short term leaders and long term problems to quote another crusty old dinosaur from the business."

Interesting knowledge from people with actual experience.

Why is NONE of this in the 7000 page report?

To be honest, there needs, easily, to be an additional report focusing on the EMS and unified command issues--a topic unforgivably lacking from the "final" report.

I'm just sticking this in as a footnote to show that many communities are still having significant 911 issues. The sort that could've led to many of the problems described in this thread:

[link to www.wbtw.com]

Horry County is addressing what it calls a dramatic increase in the number of radio failures among public safety personnel and county employees.

The problem first surfaced in 2012 and has continued to grow at a rapid pace, according to Angie Illhardt with the Horry County Communications Department. Year to date, Illhardt says two to three 800MHz radios fail each week.

Dropped calls seem to be a major problem here. How much were technical problems to blame for response issues? Why are 911 systems all across the US failing?

Just a side note, back to the topic at hand.

"....Why is NONE of this in the 7000 page report?"


They didn't know at the time how the story was going to be played out exactly. As the investigation brought up these legitimate concerns, they have since tried to plug the leaking dike of lies best they can. It still doesn't add up and never will!

Yes - dispatch consolidation had added to the 911 system woes. Ironically, in one of the SH 911 calls to a CSP dispatcher, the conversation centers on what a nightmare the consolidation has been (of A, B and L, I think).

Did you notice how many non-911 calls were coming in to dispatchers, too?

Sgt. Bill Cario, one of the biggest names in the SH response from the CSP side, was an outspoken critic of dispatch consolidation. I find that interesting.

Interesting:

"The tragedy of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., last December dramatically brings to light the need to effectively manage access in an active shooter situation. How efficiently and rapidly access and egress are controlled in a crisis can save lives."


p. 14

[link to www.siaonline.org]

Only two ambulances in the first hour of the Sandy Hook School shooting response. Two. Both of which were gone within half an hour, leaving zero. Unless anyone can disprove the evidence pointing to this, it is and always has been the real issue with Sandy Hook, followed closely by the blocked roads thereafter. That is why the FBI is giving active shooter training around the country on this point: command MUST be assigned to keep primary and secondary egress clear. All well and good if you happen to have stumbled across this issue, or the FBI happens to quietly introduce the topic to your community; but without the media attention and public outcry that should have followed in the weeks after 12/14/12, there is simply not the political will, or even awareness, to address this critical flaw in emergency response. We need to know exactly how it happened and why; the reasons are complex, and the solution will be complex. Once you finally make people aware that this is a critical problem, it then takes time to re-train responders. And we are a year and a half behind, thanks to those who made it their primary goal to protect State of CT administration jobs instead of citizens' lives.

Think about this again. A "problem in the early response...was the arrival of many ambulances."

Either the writer of this piece, or the person giving the writer the information, is distorting reality beyond recognition.

The statement implies that 1) many ambulances arrived early, that the 2) overwhelmed the scene.

This is not true. The problem was that the ambulances did NOT arrive early. And it was not ambulances that overwhelmed the scene--it was state police cars.

Think of Kehoe's statement: "They should have been managed better."

Every one was deceased, and no one was in need of transport, by the time these ambulances arrived; how could "managing them better" possibly have saved lives?

The clear answer is that Kehoe didn't mean they should have been somehow managed better after they weren't needed. The clear answer is that he meant they should have been there sooner.

Saying "the arrival of ambulances" was a problem is a very shoddy (I would argue disingenuine) way of dodging the fact that it was the LATE arrival of ambulances which was a problem.

Dispatch consolidation looming again - Kehoe and Llodra speaking out against it:

But Commission Chairman Paul Mangiafico, who visited the Prospect operation with Police Chief Michael Kehoe, said he is convinced regionalization is a bad idea.

"This is not a good idea for Newtown," he said.

...First Selectman Pat Llodra said the new look at regionalization was prompted by a state legislative push for municipalities to find ways to do business more efficiently.

Llodra conceded that "a change of this magnitude can be very threatening," and said it would not be approved if it would in any way jeopardize public safety."

[link to www.ctpost.com]

So we were able to summon Robert Riversong simply by posting, "Where is Robert Riversong when we need him?"

Will that same mantra produce PlasMan?

I was thinking since we are called " truthers"...what exactly would constitute an apologist?

I think it would explain the apologist as....

Someone who is okay with event coordinators not sending in EMS to help while allowing civilians to chill in the hot zone and later having chips and soda by a cop car telling jokes. Would that work?

Yep.

Frito lays in the face of active shooter danger. nom nom nom

Vance is going on the defensive. Six days ago:

"As bad as the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary was, it could have been much worse had police not reacted as swiftly as they did."

Translation: All those police [blocking the road] HAD to be there.

"The entire thing took about three minutes."

Translation: Disregard the mounting evidence that it was a firefight lasting 17.5 minutes.

"Vance [explained] how emergency responders and police reacted to the crisis. Aside from...a massive crime scene, police had hundreds of anxious parents...and they had to contend with a hoard of national and international media..."

Translation: Emergency responders means police. There is no medical component to emergency response. Please focus on cops, families, and evil reporters.

"Vance said police and emergency crews worked well together and followed a plan that kept parents and media informed, while keeping the crime scene intact and safe from those who didn’t need access."

Translation: Emergency crews means police. Loser EMTs weren't needed. My guy with the medical bag did it all (P.S. He's police). Contrary to what the Parkers, Gays and Poseys have just stated, there were NO problems with parents being unable to find children who were sent home with the wrong people, or with parents being given three conflicting evacuation points.

“The town where this tragedy occurred is a little upscale community with a 40-person police department. Nobody expected anything like this."

P.S. Newtown PD sucks.

[link to newstimes.augusta.com]

But wait, there's more:

"Lt. J. Paul Vance was not shy about declaring his pride in Connecticut’s canine training program — regarded one of the best in the country — and the state police force in general during his speech."

[link to www.registercitizen.com]

It would seem there's a new speaking tour.