ORLANDO, Fla. _ The city of Orlando on Wednesday released another small batch of 911 calls from the Pulse nightclub shooting that show how emergency dispatchers juggled hundreds of panicked calls, more than three months after a gunman left 49 people dead and more than 50 injured.
The emotional calls flooded in immediately after the shooting began just after 2 a.m. on June 12.
"I'm outside the Pulse and I think my friend just got shot," one caller told a dispatcher.
The dispatcher said he could not stay on the line; other calls were coming in, and he had to take them.
"But my friend is shot," the caller said.
"OK, but I've gotta hang up with you, I've gotta handle the people that are shot," the dispatcher said. "OK?"
The caller started crying. Her injured friend was with her, outside the club, she said.
"She is right here, I'm telling you, she's bleeding and she's shot," she said.
Dispatchers received a total of 603 calls from victims, friends, family, bystanders and rescue workers for hours the morning of June 12. The 911 operators balanced the need to answer calls, gather information to give to law enforcement and comfort those in distress.
Officials called into dispatch as well. At 2:12 a.m., an Orlando Fire Department employee called Orlando Regional Medical Center to prepare staff for "several patients" en route to the hospital. Meanwhile, Orlando police were setting up a "safe zone" behind Einstein's Bagels for OFD medics to treat victims.
Some people inside the club relayed information to others, who then called 911.
"He said his mom was there, and his mom got shot," one caller said at 2:18 a.m., his voice cracking. His friend and his mother, whose shoulder was injured, were still on the dance floor.
"We don't know what to tell him. ... He said he can see the shooter. The shooter's still in the building," the caller said.
The dispatcher asked if the caller's friend could describe what the shooter looked like.
The dispatcher tried to reassure the caller, telling him there were 15 officers in the club. His friend should stay quiet and low to the ground, he said.
In a call at 2:26 a.m., a police lieutenant requested multiple medics to treat "25-plus" victims. An OFD employee told the OPD that they already had first responders in the area, but were "staging until (the scene) is secure."
Soon after, police dispatchers told the fire department the scene was secure.
"They cannot go into Pulse, but the outside is secure," a fellow dispatcher is heard telling the person on the phone with OFD.
In one recording at 3:23 a.m. a female dispatcher is heard saying that a shooter is at Orlando Regional Medical Center. Then the call stops.
For more than 20 minutes, one a man relayed information to dispatchers from his sister who texting him from inside a bathroom in the club, where she heard the shooter reloading his gun.
"She's saying to please hurry up, he's going to shoot," he told a dispatcher.
She'd been shot in the ribs and legs. Her friend was across the hall, stuck in a bathroom with the shooter, the man said in the 911 call.
"She can see snipers from outside but doesn't have a visual of the shooter," he said in the call. "... She says there are multiple hostages and multiple people with gunshots. She's saying 'we are dying in here.'"
In the background of the call, a chaotic scene can be heard. Dispatchers yelled that law enforcement were knocking on a dressing room window near an air conditioner, presumably before they removed the unit to rescue several who were hiding.
The operator asked him to text her questions to get an update of where the shooter was and what he was doing. His sister's friend texted her that the gunman was readying to open fire again and had a bomb.
He said it was hard to get information from her because she was wounded.
"She just keeps saying that she's losing a lot of blood. I'm asking her to just calm down and I told her to just take off her shirt or her belt and tie it around where she's been wounded and apply pressure," he said.
At one point, he got frustrated and asked why she hadn't been saved yet.
"Why can't they find her? How many restrooms are there?" he asked.
The dispatcher reassured him, explaining officers were going room by room and "they were coming."
About 2:15 a.m., a stressed OFD dispatcher is heard lamenting to a colleague about the intensity of calls over the weekend. Singer Christina Grimmie had just been shot dead at an Orlando concert less than 48 hours before.
"What is going on with Orlando the past two nights?" the dispatcher said. "(Expletive), man."
About two dozen news organizations, including the Orlando Sentinel, filed a lawsuit against the city of Orlando demanding access to the recordings in order to better understand police response to the attack. City officials announced on Sept. 8 that they would be releasing the calls, but there would be a fee charged for the labor involved in redacting certain portions. The had previously released nine calls on Sept 1.
Attorney Rachel Fugate, who represents the media in the lawsuit, said she was not made aware that more calls would be released on Wednesday.
Though the city made the latest batch public, Fugate said she will continue fighting in court for the majority of recordings that remain confidential under a Florida law that prohibits the release of material depicting the killing of a human being.
Two hearings are scheduled in the ongoing civil case next week.
Public records law governing material depicting a person's killing is set to change in October to prohibit only information about the death of law enforcement officers, not civilians.
