Premium ContentClick on Premium Content on the Featured navigation bar for information.
Less than an hour after bullets rained down on soldiers at Fort Hood, Dr. Gail Burbridge, an Omaha native, was called into action.
Helicopters buzzed the Metroplex Hospital in Killeen, Texas, as Burbridge and other doctors waited to treat shooting victims. The wounded included police Sgt. Kimberly Munley, one of two people credited with taking down the gunman.
It was all hands on deck, as more than 30 doctors, nurses and surgeons in the area were called in to assist.
“It was surreal,’’ Burbridge, a 1972 graduate of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, told The World-Herald Saturday night.
Burbridge, 63, a general surgeon, is no stranger to working in catastrophic circumstances. He served as chief of staff at Park Plaza Hospital in Houston during Hurricane Ike last year.
Thursday afternoon was different, though. It was immediate, and it gave him little time to prepare. He was tending to patients about 40 minutes after the shootings that killed 13 and wounded 29.
Burbridge went from room to room, checking the injured and determining how stable they were.
Despite the severity of the circumstances, he said, he was going about business as usual.
“We’re kind of like firemen or race car drivers, that’s when we’re at our best, when the situation gets critical,” he said. “We calm down and take care of the most serious problems first and things happen automatically.”
There were two patients Burbridge said he will never forget.
The first was a man who was dead on arrival. He suffered a gunshot wound to the chest and had no vital signs.
The other was Munley, a civilian police officer employed by the Army. She is reported to have shot the suspected gunman, Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.
Burbridge said Munley was bleeding and in shock after suffering gunshots to both legs, with a critical injury to her left leg. A tourniquet had been applied, but she continued to bleed heavily.
As she was rushed into surgery, Burbridge said, he inserted a catheter in her shoulder. Dr. Byung Chung successfully operated on her.
“I saw her in the hospital this morning and complimented her on her bravery,” Burbridge said. “Her leg is going to be OK.”
Burbridge performed surgery on a 24-year-old man who suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen.
The victim was alert and responsive, Burbridge said, but the bullet had caused severe internal injuries and bleeding. The man was in stable condition following two hours of surgery.
A U.S. Army spokesman said Saturday that Hasan, the suspected shooter, had been taken off a ventilator and remained in intensive care at a military hospital.
Spokesman Col. John Rossi told reporters at Fort Hood that he is not sure if Hasan is able to communicate. The military moved him Friday to Brooke Medical Center in San Antonio, about 150 miles southwest of Fort Hood.
Metroplex, about 17 miles from Fort Hood, handled seven shooting victims in its 15-room ER. The others were diverted to hospitals across central Texas.
Burbridge is a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Omaha Westside High School. He works in an annex 50 yards behind the hospital. He is a member of a team of doctors and surgeons at the Scott & White clinic.
Burbridge said he was impressed with the response of the volunteers and medical workers who rushed to aid the victims.
“It was amazing how many life flight helicopters were available to evacuate victims,” he said.
“Although the shooting occurred sometime around 1:30 p.m., by 2:15 p.m. we had seven people in our ER, and by 4:30 p.m. everything was over.”
Contact the writer:
444-1414, ross.boettcher@owh.com
Copyright ©2012 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
