The first paramedic on the scene of the Manchester Arena bombing has told a public inquiry he was not prepared for what a “large-scale and awful incident” it was.
Patrick Ennis was the first person from North West ambulance service to arrive at the venue after Salman Abedi detonated a bomb that killed 22 people and injured hundreds of others at the end of an Ariana Grande concert on 22 May 2017.
“The information I had been given hadn’t prepared me for the scale of the incident, so until I saw it for myself, saw the City Room, I hadn’t realised,” he told the public inquiry into the attack. “Nothing that anybody had said to me before that had really prepared me for what a large-scale and awful incident it was.”
He was one of three paramedics to enter the City Room on the night, and the inquiry has been told he will return to give more detailed evidence about what happened there at a later date.
On Wednesday the inquiry heard that Ennis arrived at the scene at 10.42pm, 11 minutes after the detonation, having self-deployed to the arena upon seeing a rapid flurry of 999 calls reporting an explosion.
On arrival Ennis saw a number of walking wounded and people with injuries “consistent with being shot”, he said. At 10.46pm Ennis called a “major incident standby” – one step down from officially declaring a major incident – and asked for “a minimum of four ambulances” to be dispatched to the arena. He entered the City Room at 10.52pm.
Ennis said he had been “quite self-critical” in the immediate aftermath about not being aware sooner that it was a major incident, and that “potentially this could have delayed” the emergency response.
“I’ve since been made aware that it didn’t delay any treatment, but that was certainly one of the things I was worrying about at the time,” he said.
