Those cowards should be fired. From the Miami Herald:
Paramedics wanted to enter Parkland school where kids were dying. BSO said no.
During the chaos of the Parkland school shooting, paramedics from Coral Springs-Parkland Fire Department were desperate to go inside the building where students were wounded and dying.
Michael McNally, deputy chief for Coral Springs fire-rescue, asked six times for permission to send in specialized teams of police officers and paramedics, according to an incident report he filed after the Feb. 14 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that left 17 people dead.
But every time McNally asked to deploy the two Rescue Task Force teams — each made up of three paramedics and three to four law enforcement officers — the Broward Sheriff's Office captain in charge of the scene, Jan Jordan, said no.
"The [BSO] incident commander advised me, 'She would have to check,' " McNally wrote in the report released Thursday by Coral Springs. "After several minutes, I requested once again the need to deploy RTF elements into the scene to ... initiate treatment as soon as possible. Once again, the incident commander expressed that she 'would have to check before approving this request.' "
Even after the shooter had been arrested, the answer remained the same.
A bit more:
In his report, McNally, who had been ordered to act as a liaison between Coral Springs fire command and BSO, also claimed BSO's command post was severely dysfunctional. Communication was difficult, McNally said, because he often could not locate Jordan, BSO's district commander for Parkland.
"The command post was inundated with too many people and made it impossible to establish and function," McNally wrote, echoing criticisms of the disorganization and lack of a unified command structure that plagued BSO's response to a deadly shooting at the Fort-Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport last year.
Christ on a Corn Dog - this is what you train for. I am a very low-level responder with CERT and our local WECG and ARES but I have been through ICS training. Everyone learns what their job is and they do it. ICS was developed (PDF) to provide a clear understandable chain of command throughout the duration of an incident.
For the Broward Sherrif's Office to have not trained their staff is unconcionable.
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