With shooting victims on the site of the Route 91 Harvest Festival and taking shelter in nearby hotels, police officers clustered around firefighters, protecting the paramedics as they worked to stabilize and move the wounded to safety.
The agencies had practiced together for years on these rescue task forces, preparing for the possibility of a mass-casualty event like the Oct. 1 massacre, which authorities said was perpetrated by a lone gunman firing from an elevated position inside Mandalay Bay.
“It seems rather aggressive, but we’ve learned from past incidents where people were injured and nobody pulled them out and, unfortunately, they died, where potentially they could have been saved,” said Joe Geeb, a Clark County fire captain based out of Station 33.