How Community Ambulance has altered its approach to mass-casualty incidents

By Camalot Todd

Sunday, Sept. 30, 2018 | 2 a.m.

Glen Simpson didn’t realize how anxious he would feel.

Simpson, the director of special events at Community Ambulance, was working a music festival last weekend when he started to experience anxiety from being at an outdoor music venue.

The nervousness comes with good reason.

Simpson was one of 21 first-responders from Community Ambulance who provided medical care during the Oct. 1 mass shooting on the Strip. There were 58 casualties and hundreds more who suffered injuries, both physical and mental.

“I didn’t realize how much anxiety I was going to have here. I am out at an outdoor venue,” Simpson said. “I don’t know how you describe it. There’s definitely moments of you looking behind your back, looking up, and you realizing that here I am with the same people that acted so courageously [then]."

In the year since, Community Ambulance has taken several steps to improve the system that reacts to mass casualty incidents through a multi-pronged approach that includes community engagement, improved cross-organization communication, public speaking and specialized training.

Simpson said the organization always thoroughly pre-planned for events months in advance. That planning now includes how it would respond to incidents such as if a car drives through festival grounds, or if there’s shooter from above.

“The elephant in the room becomes what do we do if we have somebody shoot from above?” Simpson said. “I really think for us in all these pre-planning meetings for these major events we're always talking about what could the bad people do, and now what they could do is expanding.”

Some of the changes include an increase in the amount of supplies like tourniquets and chest seals.

“We live in a city where we know how to do events, we’re always looking for ways to do better at events, we’re always looking for ways to one up people, and I really think that’s what makes us who we are as a community,” Simpson said. “We want to meet the needs of that customer, we share that same passion, that same drive to make things safe.”

Community Ambulance implemented the new patient-tracking system EMTRACK, which provides a more advanced way to track the location of a patient during a mass tragedy through a barcode wristband that notifies first-responders and medical professionals of the location of a patient in real time.

The organization’s employees were also enrolled in Tactical Emergency Casualty Care, an extensive mass casualty training that includes a pair of 16-hour days when team members are taught how to best treat a large inflow of patients in mass emergencies similar to what combat medics must do.

Community Ambulance is the only authorized training site in Southern Nevada authorized by the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians to hold this training. Additionally, Simpson has traveled the world to help at seminars, sharing best practices learned from responding to Oct. 1.

Community Ambulance will host a private medal ceremony for on-site medic team and other first-responders who helped on Oct. 1. Some members of the Vegas Golden Knights are expected to participate.

“None of us got into this job to stand in front of the camera, none of us got into this job to be called a hero. We got into this job because there’s a drive and there’s a passion to do right in our world,” Simpson said. “This job has enabled me to do that in somebody's darkest moment. Just being able to be that calm voice in their chaotic time, even 1 October sitting there watching somebody die in my arms, but being able to just be with them in that moment, stay positive.”