ORLANDO, Fla. — The Orlando Fire Department is telling its first responders it’s OK to hurt, following a mass shooting at an Orlando gay nightclub.
More than 80 of them were on scene helping victims at Pulse on Sunday.
WATCH: 'No one expected this'
The sound of gunshots was so unexpected outside Fire Station 5, it was unclear at first what the sound was.
“I mean, (we thought), ‘They must be having a good time.’ A few minutes later, you begin to hear the sirens. We begin to get the dispatch calls,” said Chief Roderick Williams. “And then the reality of what it was set in, because there was that eerie quiet afterward.”
Davis said it’s one of the worst things he’s witnessed in his career.
“This is not one of those things you want to put on your resume,” District Chief Bryan Davis said.
Still, what happened that night will be analyzed and picked apart because training for active shooters, mass casualties, and bomb threats, has always been done separately.
“This was a culmination of all three of those things thrown into one. And that’s not something that any agency in this nation’s dealt with,” Davis. “It was gut-wrenching. It was heart-wrenching.”
The chief said his department will heal alongside the city.
“It’s still a great place to live. It’s still a safe city. I would hope this one incident does not define us as a city, and as a community,” said Williams.
Williams said one-by-one, he’s telling the men and women who saved lives at the club that night that it’s OK to get help.
He said professional counselors are in place to help his men and woman process what they saw.
Cox Media Group
