“Shots fired! Officer down!” When these words come over a page for emergency medical assistance, it sends chills up and down the spines of all listeners, especially the EMTs about to rush to the scene, hoping to bring life-saving aid to the injured officer and any other wounded.

I could not have foreseen such a tragic event taking place in my quiet mountain community, but it did a week before Christmas. I am the fire chief of a small, rural volunteer fire department and I made that EMS run. My wife, who also is a first responder, and I had heard the situation unfold on the sheriff's office frequency. Even before the EMS page came across the fire frequency, we were headed for the station. We listened as another officer on the scene reported that our friend, a deputy sheriff and member of our volunteer fire department, had been shot.

The perpetrator had shot the deputy and fired at his partner before being taken down. At the time, our emergency crew had no way to know all that had transpired. We only knew that one of ours was down and shots had been fired.

My district covers 49 square miles of urban interface with a large national forest. We are 25 miles from the nearest hospital, and the mountain road to that location is crammed with sharp curves and a 16-mile downgrade that sheds over 4,300 feet in the process. First responders potentially could be alone with the injured for tens of minutes before Advanced Life Support or backup law enforcement arrived at the scene.

In my haste to provide aid to a friend and colleague, I made two potentially fatal errors in judgment. My decision process was clouded knowing that my friend was injured, and although I have apologized to my department I'm having trouble forgiving myself for these blunders in reasoning. I hope other departments will learn from my mistakes.

High emotions

The scene was only 1½ miles down a two-lane highway from the fire station, and travel time was just over a minute. Normally, the sheriff's office dispatcher informs us of an unsecured scene. In this case they didn't provide the status, and I didn't ask. This was my most serious mistake. It occurred to me just before we arrived at the scene that I didn't know if the scene was secure, but I saw one officer who didn't appear to be seeking cover. As we slid to a halt, I yelled for the first responders to go in.

What we discovered within a few minutes was a fatally wounded deputy, a dead perpetrator, a fatally wounded pregnant girlfriend and an injured 3½-year-old girl who probably witnessed it all. The second officer wasn't injured. Two of the EMTs went inside the house to comfort and treat the child.

It wasn't until later that the gravity of my decision to enter the scene without knowing if it was safe fell on my shoulders like a lead weight. We really had no idea what we were getting into, and it was hours before the risk soaked into my brain.

Had the shooter been successful in taking down the second officer, our crew would have rushed onto a killing field. I later discovered that the perpetrator was prepared for additional conflict, with a scoped rifle and cartridges lined up on the table for fast action. He had already killed four people and probably would have killed the little girl, the second officer and our crew. He then would have had a few minutes to escape before backup law enforcement arrived, or maybe he would have taken them on as well. This was a bad situation at best.

I hope my experience will cause department officers of other fire and rescue companies to reflect on this lapse of reason and remember to think before entering a location with such questionable circumstances. The only way I know to prevent future responders from charging head-long into a potentially tragic and fatal setting is to train, train and train some more so that considering the security of a scene is second nature to the responding crew.

Fire response crews also must be briefed over and over again or they might make the same mistake I did when I knew that a friend needed medical help desperately — I placed a crew that I'm responsible for in-harm's way.

Existing problems

The second problem really started seven months before, but it didn't come to fruition until that fateful night. I had attended landing officer class when helicopter medical air evacuation began operating out of a small town some 25 miles away. At that time, the air evacuation personnel told each department that they would be providing us a night-landing strobe light kit. I contacted them via e-mail twice since then but have yet to receive the landing strobe kit. I have thought several times of purchasing one or two kits but haven't done so.

On this run, I heard on the radio shortly after arriving on the scene that medevac was inbound. I thought to myself, what are we going to use for nighttime landing indicators? There were no fire units or rescue units at the incident; the only vehicle we had on hand was the ambulance. I didn't have enough vehicles to block the highway or enough flares; I needed to place five flares marking the edges of the landing zone and the wind direction, but I only had three flares on the ambulance.

The other item that I didn't have on location and could have desperately needed was a GPS receiver, which I could have used to determine and provide the inbound aircraft with coordinates. Our department has two GPS receivers. One is on our brush truck and one is in the command vehicle, neither of which was on the scene. In this case, we were located at a U.S. highway address so the flight crew could locate us easily. This wouldn't have been true had we been on some dirt road or two-track rut, of which we have plenty. Had we needed to land the helicopter in a small meadow in the backcountry, GPS coordinates relayed via radio to the inbound flight crew would have ensured rapid location and landing.

I felt myself in a pickle. After considering our options for a few seconds, I consulted with the only law enforcement officer on the scene, and we decided that we were just placing the flight crew and their helicopter in needless danger. The only live patient was the little girl, and her wounds were superficial. I cancelled the air evacuation and called for a medical investigator.

I never want to experience this helpless feeling again. I don't want to endanger flight crew safety because of lack of proper landing aids. Our department ordered two sets of landing-aid strobe light kits a few days later. One of these kits now rides on the ambulance and one lives on the rescue truck. If the air evacuation service ever gets around to providing departments with their promised strobe kit, we will place the third package in our command vehicle.

Our ambulance and rescue truck soon will be equipped with GPS receivers. In rural areas, supplying the air evacuation pilot with location coordinates is simply the smart way to go. Don't waste time having the crew look for lights; radio the coordinates to the pilot, and he can dial them in and fly right to you.

Negative repetition

For the sake of a couple hundred dollars, it's not worth the risk of not having the best landing aids available. If you lose the helicopter, you might also lose the patient for which you called for air evacuation in the first place.

Don't let your department experience the pitfalls of such poor judgment and the helpless feeling that comes with trying to accomplish a difficult and dangerous task without the proper training and equipment. Be prepared by discussing and planning for this type of event.

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Grady McCright is chief of the James Canyon Volunteer Fire Department, Cloudcroft, N.M. He is the author of the non-fiction book Jessie Evans: Lincoln County Badman and of five fiction books.