The first responder to arrive to the rural Fillmore County home where a deck collapsed at a Fourth of July party, injuring at least 17 people, said the initial challenge was determining exactly what emergency crews were dealing with.
Tracey Landenberger, the police chief and volunteer fire chief in Sutton, responded to the flood of 911 calls after the deck on the ranch-style home located a few miles northeast of town collapsed under the weight of dancing young adults just after midnight, the structure and occupants falling 10 to 12 feet onto people standing below.
As he drove toward the property — located on County Road D among the small communities of Sutton, Grafton and Henderson — Landenberger said he encountered a half-mile-long stream of cars leaving the scene.Â
"It was really kind of chaotic just trying to get through the vehicle traffic, as well as the pedestrians running around, to try to get up to the house to figure out what in the world we even had," he said in a phone interview on Tuesday.
People are also reading…
The scene at the house was no less chaotic.Â
Landenberger said he arrived to find 50 to 100 young adults "running around the front yard," some carrying their injured, bleeding friends to nearby cars.Â
The homeowner led the volunteer fire chief into the house, where Landenberger saw one woman suffering from a seizure and another in shock with an apparent broken ankle, the bone visible.Â
But with more help on the way, his immediate attention went to a woman with a gash on her head who remained trapped under a mound of debris. Volunteer firefighters eventually used extraction tools to free her, Landenberger said, and she was transported to a Lincoln hospital by medical helicopter.Â
"It was just chaotic," said Langenberger. "I couldn't even paint that picture to you. It was just — running all over the place. The more we looked, the more injured we'd find."
Landenberger's account of the large-scale response to a mass casualty event comes as other details about the party and deck collapse remain fleeting.Â
As many as 200 people were in attendance, many of them driving from Lincoln and Omaha in response to a social media post, one attendee said.
The home overlooking a backyard pool and nearby pond is 70 miles southwest of Lincoln.
"They did a good job of having a big party out in the middle of nowhere and not anybody really knowing what was going on," Landenberger said, noting that the homeowner's son has attended school in Lincoln.
Jai McBeath was among the partygoers. She was setting on the deck's edge when it crumbled, describing the moments leading up to the collapse as a "bounce house," with about 30 people dancing enthusiastically to a song the DJ had put on.
On Monday, McBeath described how she held onto a railing to keep from falling and watched the chaos unfold below as those in the crowd worked to untangle from others and the debris.
“People were piled on top of each other. It was insane,†she said.
Landenberger said there were empty beer cans scattered around the property but directed law enforcement-related questions to the Fillmore County Sheriff's Office, the agency investigating the deck collapse. No details of the investigation were released Tuesday.
A spokesman for the Nebraska State Patrol, which assisted with traffic control at the scene, said the agency didn't have "anything to add."Â
Tim Lewis, Clay County's emergency manager and a first responder, said his role has devolved into a waiting game as he attempts to complete reports.Â
Seventeen people were transported from the scene by ambulance to hospitals — including eight to Fillmore County Hospital in Geneva, all of whom were either treated and released or transferred elsewhere, according to the medical center's administrator.Â
Four patients ended up at Bryan Health campuses in Lincoln, where one remained hospitalized as of Tuesday. It's unclear how many of the four — if any — were walk-ins who had fled the collapse and sought medical care privately.Â
The condition of the patient hospitalized in Lincoln is unknown, and representatives at three other hospitals that received patients did not respond to requests for information.