Within seconds after the Las Vegas shooting started, L.A. City Fire Captain and paramedic Tom Stafford, a Santa Clarita resident, knew something was wrong.
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Instinct kicked in, he said, and the emergency official and his party of a dozen friends, including his wife, immediately went into “Run. Hide. Fight,” he said, referring to the widely promoted active shooter safety plan.
“I knew it was coming from the right, I just didn’t know where,” said Stafford, who lives in the Bridgeport area. “It was pure chaos and it was pure panic on the part of the crowd.”
Stafford, who has more than 30 years experience with the city’s Fire Department, and owns and operates Superior Life Support, was lightly grazed by the gunfire, but considers himself extremely lucky. The mass shooting, the deadliest in American history, claimed 58 lives and left more than 500 injured.
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“It seemed like it went on a long time — 10 minutes of automatic gunfire is an eternity,” Stafford recalled.
He plans to be at the Santa Clarita-hosted vigil Wednesday night, which is taking place at Marketplace Park, but he was going to be there to support those who were seriously injured and those who lost friends and family members, he said, not considering his close call a serious injury.
While he and his party managed to get away without injury, he could understand how some might have felt “guilty,” which was one of the themes being discussed among survivors in the media.
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“My takeaway would be that because my life was spared, and that of my family and friends, what good in the world can I do,” he said Wednesday.
“The training that I applied wasn’t that of mitigating a multi-casualty incident — it was, ‘run, hide and fight.’ We ran and we hid, that’s what instincts kicked in. I can’t help anybody when I’m under gun fire.”
Looking forward, he wants to use the lessons and opportunity to spread information about “Run. Hide. Fight,” he said.
“‘Run, hide and fight,’ and ‘stop the bleeding’ are the two campaigns that we’re going to be promoting from (Superior Life Support),” said Stafford, referring to the authorized training center he owns with his wife.
The first instinct should be self-preservation, he said, but then added if you are a safe distance from the action and can help others, “stop the bleeding” is the important next step, to help those who are injured.
“My goal is now to train people,” he said, “and to have them be prepared for these multi-casualty and active shooter-type incidents.”
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Happy to hear that you, your family and friends are safe Tom! I’ve taken many of your courses at Superior!