On the night of October 1, 2017, Las Vegas fire crews raced not to a burning building but into something closer to a war zone.
From the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel, a lone gunman unleashed rapid fire on the Route 91 Harvest Festival, killing 58 people that night and wounding hundreds more.
Firefighters, paramedics and EMTs found themselves performing battlefield medicine under the shadow of an active shooter.
They did so with courage and resourcefulness, but the official ‘1 October – After Action Report’ reveals that heroism alone is not enough.
The report makes clear that the gaps between agencies, the breakdowns in communication and the lack of coordinated planning turned an already horrific tragedy into an even more dangerous response environment.
Duncan J. White
To their credit, the fire and EMS personnel on scene saved lives through sheer determination. Rescue Task Force teams entered “warm zones” with police protection, bringing bleeding control directly to the wounded.
Fire engines became makeshift ambulances. Tourniquets were improvised from belts when supplies ran out. Hospitals across the city coped with floods of patients arriving in everything from ambulances to private trucks.
Years of training in mass-casualty scenarios helped responders adapt on the fly. But, what the report shows is that adaptation filled holes that should never have existed.
The most glaring gap was that the fire department had not been fully integrated into the festival’s pre-event planning. Firefighters and dispatchers had little awareness of the event’s size, no role in contingency planning and no common map or staging plan to work from.
When the gunfire started, crews were improvising their way into a disaster they had not been asked to help prepare for. This omission was more than an oversight; it was a structural failure of how multi-agency planning is approached in the United States.
Command and control also faltered. The Incident Command System is meant to unify law enforcement, fire and EMS under one structure, but that unity proved elusive in the opening minutes.
Duncan J. White
Some units self-deployed, others were left in staging with no orders and accountability was patchy. At one point, two separate staging areas were operating without consistent oversight.
The role of EMS branch director changed hands and was described in the report as “operationally ineffective.” While the system eventually stabilised, the delay cost precious minutes.
Communications failures compounded the confusion. Radio channels were jammed, with multiple agencies talking over one another.
Some crews never received updated instructions because the cellular network was congested and their mobile terminals froze. Inside Mandalay Bay, radio coverage was spotty, forcing responders to scramble for alternatives.
Even the language used caused problems: references to “north” and “south” staging meant different things to different people in the heat of the moment. What should have been a shared operating picture fractured into dozens of partial perspectives.
Resource management was equally strained. The medical tent on site, stocked for the typical bumps and scrapes of a country music festival, was overwhelmed within minutes.
Duncan J. White
Trauma supplies were exhausted, and responders relied on whatever they could scrounge. Ambulance coordination became chaotic.
More than 130 transport vehicles, including private ambulances and personal cars, carried patients to hospitals, but no one had a clear picture of who went where.
The fact that hospitals absorbed the surge is a testament to their resilience, not to any systematic coordination.
The lesson here is stark: no single agency can shoulder the burden of a mass shooting alone. Preparedness must be multi-agency from the outset, not cobbled together under fire.
That means fire and EMS must be invited to the planning table for large events, with shared action plans, common staging points and clear communications protocols.
Unified command must be more than theory; it must be drilled into practice so that when disaster strikes, agencies lock together instead of scattering. Communications systems need redundancy and discipline, with channels assigned, tested and resilient against overload.
Medical support must be scaled for worst-case scenarios, not best guesses. And perhaps most importantly, patient tracking must move into the 21st century so hospitals, dispatchers and commanders know where victims are being sent in real time.
There is also a human lesson. Firefighters and paramedics carried the trauma of that night long after the sirens faded. Scenes of carnage, usually reserved for combat, left scars on those who had sworn only to protect their neighbours.
Any discussion of preparedness must also include support for the mental health of responders. Resilience is not just about radios and tourniquets; it’s about sustaining the people we ask to run into the chaos.
Duncan J. White
The response on October 1 was filled with courage, improvisation and sacrifice. But courage cannot substitute for coordination, and improvisation cannot make up for planning.
The After Action Report is more than an account of what happened; it is a roadmap of what must change.
If other cities heed its findings, integrating fire and EMS into event planning, tightening command, fortifying communications and scaling medical capacity, they will not prevent the horror of mass shootings, but they will ensure that when the unthinkable happens, the response is not just brave but effective.
That is the least we owe the victims of Las Vegas and those who fought to save them.
Stay safe!
