It’s been 48 days since Jessica Flores hid inside a walk-in refrigerator with 60 other people who’d escaped — some with gunshot wounds — from the Route 91 concert in Las Vegas.
In the chaos after Stephen Paddock opened fire from his hotel window on the crowd below, Flores had gotten separated from all but one of the 11 friends and family members she’d convinced to come to the show. The fridge was cold, but she was shaking with panic at the thought that she might never see her loved ones again.
Saturday, six of those loved ones reunited at UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange for a class on how to provide lifesaving care in the critical moments following a major accident or trauma.
“When I was in that situation, I was frozen at first,” said Flores, 46, of Long Beach. “This class made me feel like I’m prepared. Now I’m not going to be afraid to help.”
The class was created by the American College of Surgeons in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. The idea is to give everyone information and skills they need to act as “immediate responders,” stopping blood loss until medical personnel can help.
“People can bleed out within a few minutes,” said Christy Carroll, a registered nurse and trauma prevention coordinator at UC Irvine Medical Center.
“Most traumatic deaths come from blood loss,” she said. “And you can stop that. You can control that.”
Staff at UC Irvine Medical Center started training for the course in April, Carroll said. They held their first class in October for six people. An early morning class Saturday quickly booked up with 10 new students. But Carroll added a second session when Flores reached out and shared her story.
Flores and her sister, Jeannine, attended the Route 91 concert in 2016. They loved the music and friendly atmosphere, so Flores “rallied all the troops” and got a group of longtime friends to drive out to Vegas for this year’s festival.
By the time Jason Aldean took the stage just before 10 p.m., her group had scattered. Her sister’s 16-year-old daughter was near the front with her friend. Another group was near the back. And she took a couple friends with her for a restroom break just as shots started to ring out.
As video footage has shown, she said no one really reacted to the first or second shot. Flores thought it was fireworks or a speaker malfunction. But her sister and two of her friends are officers with the Los Angeles Police Department, and they quickly realized they were hearing gunfire.
Flores’ friends each took one of her arms, and they started to run.
It wasn’t until they made it into the refrigerator inside Hooter’s Casino that Flores was able to reach her sister and other friends by phone.
All 12 of the people in Flores’ group managed to escape without physical injuries. But the emotional trauma has been difficult to cope with, she said.
“The month of October was very difficult for me,” she said, her hair tucked in a “Vegas Strong” baseball cap. “I couldn’t be out alone. I couldn’t be in large crowds.”
Therapy has been a big help, she said. And, though Saturday’s class did trigger some difficult memories, she said it also left her feeling more in control.
“Preparation is the best prevention,” Carroll, the instructor, said. “You may not be able to prevent the incident, but you may be able to prevent the death that might come from it.”
Carroll walked Flores and her friends through how to identify a life-threatening injury and how to respond.
The friends took turns applying tourniquets to a plastic model of a leg. Next they learned to stuff mock gunshot and stab wounds with blood-clotting gauze, then apply as much pressure as they could.
“They’re gonna holler. They’re gonna scream,” Carroll said. “But if you don’t stop the bleeding, they’re going to die.”
Alex Diaz of Culver City asked about using a belt if a tourniquet isn’t available — something all the friends saw happen at the Route 91 festival.
Flores recalled someone using the tubing that held a doctor’s stethoscope to cut off bleeding. Another friend said people stuffed wounds with tampons in lieu of gauze.
Hearing the students describe what they went through made Saturday’s class an unusually powerful one, Carroll said, as she blinked back tears. She hopes their stories will motivate more people to seek out training.
UC Irvine Medical Center offers its “Stop the Bleed” course for $30 on the third Saturday of each month. The next open session is in February, with registration available at UCIrvineHealth.org/events.
