A fire captain from the Antelope Valley was among the impromptu first responders who stayed in the path of gunfire during the Las Vegas shooting working to save lives before on-duty emergency responders could arrive at the scene.

“We heard … fireworks,” said Ted Kalnas. He thought the sound was part of the show at first, until seeing people drop to the ground around him.

“It didn’t sound like gunfire,” he said. “It just didn’t sound like gunfire in the normal manner.”

After being separated from one member of his group, Nathalie Vanderstay, who was shot twice in the chaos, Kalnas helped usher the other three people with him towards potential safety.

“The closest cover we could get to really quickly was the VIP grandstands about 20 yards away,” he said. “When we sought cover underneath the grandstands, we were still being shot at. Bullets were flying everywhere… We knew people were hurt, several people were killed under there. It was dark. We couldn’t see. We didn’t want to turn on any flashlights.”

Related: Las Vegas Shooting: Two More Victims From Santa Clarita Recovering From Injuries

After the bullets stopped raining down for a few minutes, the group moved on, until finding a “multi-casualty staging area,” where many of the people bandaging and triaging wounds were concertgoers themselves.

Vedamay Bradford, Kalnas’ girlfriend, immediately fell back on her training as a registered nurse to give first aid to those in need. Kalnas stepped in to help as well.

“My girlfriend went to work doing advanced life support. I started bandaging,” he said. “We stayed there for an hour or two, still under gunfire. SWAT came up and told us we had to leave. … The guy was still firing. (But) everybody stayed. We told SWAT to jam it.”

They continuing to treat the wounded until nearly midnight. Emergency responders were being kept out of the “hot zone” because law enforcement officials were worried that they might be targeted.

“They were being held outside,” Kalnas said. “If it wasn’t for a half dozen of us that were bandaging, taping and starting IV’s, there would be a lot more dead. It was a freak circumstance. No paramedics were coming in. We couldn’t leave all these people, we knew the risks, so we stayed.”

After more than an hour at the staging area, Kalnas and Bradford moved further away from the concert area to the official multi-casualty staging area, where victims had been laid out on colored tarps that corresponded with the severity of their injuries.

“They were loading up people in what was called a rapid extraction,” Kalnas said, describing a process where those with severe injuries were loaded into ambulances as quickly as they arrived. “It was probably one of the most chaotic, but well orchestrated, (things I’ve seen).”

Several other off-duty emergency responders and medical personnel had joined in at this evacuation site, attempting to stabilize those who had been shot before they could be transported.  

“Everybody came together as one off-duty team to help the wounded,” said Kalnas. “I was very proud to be a part of that. It was a consolation to know we did as much as we could for the greater good.”

However, Kalnas said the trauma of the night was not lost on him.

“There was a man who was sobbing hysterically, and commenting that for the first time since he had become a surgeon, he was unable to help a single soul,” he remembered.

The mental toll of the incident is something Kalnas is sure will take a long time to fully measure.

“I know all of us are probably going to have to go to mental therapy,” he said.

And because of this, he encouraged everyone who was at the incident, either as a concertgoer or as a first responder, to seek help.

“I know we’re all at various stages of guilt or denial or toughness — many guys don’t want to admit they’ve been through a life-altering event. But get help,” he said. “It’s going to catch up to you. Maybe not today or this month, but it’s going to catch you.”

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