Created: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 12:00 a.m. CST FONT SIZE:   Not alone: Hundreds of emergency responders helped on Feb. 14By BENJI FELDHEIM - bfeldheim@daily-chronicle.com
Eric Hicks was a block away when the shooting started. The DeKalb Fire captain was out with other firefighters on an emergency call shortly after 3 p.m. Feb. 14 near the intersection at Lucinda Avenue and Garden Road when a call came in about a shooting at Northern Illinois University. “We got there and started setting up the command structure, calling the hospital and getting things going with others who arrived,” Hicks said. DeKalb Fire Lt. Tom Murphy was in the middle of a training exercise at Fire Station 2 on South Seventh Street when he and other firefighters heard about the shootings, he said. They jumped into an ambulance, and upon arriving at Cole Hall, Murphy and two other firefighters were given orders by Hicks. “We entered the building, and Captain Hicks just pointed, ‘I want this one, that one and that one.’ We just went to work,” Murphy said. “I saw police officers working on patients, and engine crews doing the same. “That’s what told me the chaos was being handled, it was being controlled.” Hicks, Murphy and DeKalb Fire Acting Chief Bruce Harrison were among the first to arrive at Cole Hall the afternoon of Feb. 14, after a former NIU student walked into Room 101 in the building and opened fire, killing five students and injuring at least 16 others before turning the gun on himself. But they were not alone. By 3:30 p.m., hundreds of firefighters, police officers, EMTs, sheriff’s deputies and federal agents from DeKalb County and across the state had either arrived or were on their way to NIU. Dozens of people who weren’t emergency workers also helped with their first-aid skills or by comforting traumatized students. “Everyone to a degree had an expectation of what we would try to accomplish in such an occurrence, and it worked well,” Harrison said. “But the initial moments are always difficult. It’s very chaotic and stressful, and part of that is the disbelief that it’s occurring. “No one really expected this to happen.” Normal day Harrison said Feb. 14 started as a routine day. There were training exercises, emergency calls and equipment maintenance, and people were talking about their Valentine’s Day plans, he said. But it turned out to be a day to put into practice what fire, EMS and law enforcement officials in and near DeKalb County had practiced just a few months prior to the shootings. In October 2007, they took part in a mass-casualty exercise that included a helicopter evacuation. And an emergency plan went into effect Dec. 18 at NIU, when graffiti threatening an attack was found scrawled on the wall of a campus bathroom. “It takes a lot of work to be a prepared community, and what we did prior to Feb. 14 prepared us well,” Harrison said. “But it doesn’t stop, and our goal is to stay ready.” Incident management planning involves fire, police, event security and event management officials all working under guidelines in which people are assigned specific tasks in the event of an emergency, Harrison said. Plans are drafted for large events such as Corn Fest and NIU move-in days, as well as emergencies, Harrison said. After the April 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., for instance, emergency and university officials reviewed that school’s response to see what worked well and what didn’t, Harrison said. Responders arrive The parking lot just west of Cole Hall became the staging ground for a massive emergency response following the Feb. 14 shooting. And it was there that a variety of people lent a hand. EMS, fire and police officers came from across Illinois to help, converging near Cole Hall. But also others — like a medic who had served in Iraq and Huskie football players — played a key role in caring for wounded students until those with more medical training could arrive, Harrison said. One obstacle to overcome was the exodus of students and staff when word of the shootings spread beyond Cole Hall. “We expected that,” Harrison said about the myriad people leaving Cole Hall when emergency crews arrived. “The people who can move do not stay there; they look to leave. We were aware we had to get these things done, with cooperation of University Police and other departments. Working with other agencies is critical.” By about 3:15 p.m., Cole Hall was secured. Plans were made to move patients to the hospital depending on how severely they were injured — a crucial part of the incident management plan. “You ask people to do things they might not normally do, like walk past someone who’s injured to get to the staging ground,” Harrison said. “That’s how it’s planned. The dispatchers also did a phenomenal job, especially since we had multiple locations with patients.” Once the most serious wounded were moved, emergency personnel started moving people with injuries who were at Neptune Hall, Holmes Student Center and the Student Medical Center, Harrison said. By 5 p.m., all who were wounded either in Cole Hall or when fleeing the attack had been transported to the hospital. “By seven, eight at night, all the patients were either in surgery, transferred to other hospitals, released or in rooms,” Harrison said. “It was back to the routine, so to speak.” Moving forward Hicks, Murphy and Harrison won’t forget what happened, but they are not living in the past. “On the ground level, the company officer level, I know the effect it’s had on people I supervise daily,” Murphy said. “We experienced this emergency. Those experiences are how we’ll grow and learn.” Know more Firefighters and law enforcement officers from across the state were called to the NIU campus on Feb. 14 through two communications systems:
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