Public security

How Can Communities Prepare for Mass Shootings? Orlando Offers Lessons

The Pulse shooting — which killed 49 and wounded 53 — turned the March drill into a middle-of-the-night reality for scores of doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, paramedics and pathologists. Wrenching questions remain: Could more lives have been saved if the police had stormed the nightclub earlier? Did terrified victims bleed to death waiting for help to arrive?

The Orlando experience validated what experts in emergency medicine had long known: The faster victims can reach the hospital, the more likely they are to survive. Of the 49 victims, just nine died in the trauma center — and they died minutes after arriving, hospital officials said, which suggests they had been mortally wounded.