The first paramedic at the Manchester Arena bombing site told a public inquiry that he was unprepared for the “terrible, large-scale incident” that he was.
Patrick Ennis was the first person from the Northwest ambulance service to arrive at the scene after Salman Abedi detonated a bomb that killed 22 people and injured hundreds more at the end of an Ariana Grande concert on May 22, 2017.
“The information I received did not prepare me for the scale of the incident, so until I saw it myself, I saw the City Room, I didn’t realize it,” he told the public inquiry about the attack. “Nothing that anyone told me before really prepared me for the terrible and large-scale incident that it was.”
He was one of three paramedics to enter the City Room that night, and the inquiry has been informed that he will return to provide more detailed evidence about what happened there at a later date.
On Wednesday, the investigation heard that Ennis arrived at 10:42 pm, 11 minutes after the detonation, having implanted himself in the arena when he saw a flurry of 999 calls reporting an explosion.
Upon arrival, Ennis saw several traveling ambulances and people with injuries “consistent with the gunshots,” he said. At 10:46 pm, Ennis called a “serious incident alert” – one step below the official statement of a serious incident – and asked for “a minimum of four ambulances” to be dispatched to the arena. He entered the City Room at 10:52 pm.
Ennis said he was “quite self-critical” immediately after not realizing it was a major incident and that “potentially it could have delayed” the emergency response.
“Since then, I have been informed that I have not delayed any treatment, but that was certainly one of the things I was concerned about at the time,” he said.