New York

Ordinary people trained to save lives in shootings, attacks

Associated Press
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Colby Rowe, a paramedic educational coordinator for Stony Brook University Hospital's Trauma Center, demonstrates how to apply a tourniquet during a training session for Stony Brook University administrators and security staff, Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016, in Stony Brook, N.Y. Stony Brook University personnel were given instruction on how to treat gunshot wounds, gashes and other injuries until actual EMTs can get to the scene. (AP Photo/Michael Balsamo) (The Associated Press)

Two staffers from the Three Village Central School District in Stony Brook, N.Y., practice applying a tourniquet to one another during a first aid training session at Stony Brook University, Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016, in New York. A new federal initiative seeks to prevent deaths in terror attacks and school shootings by training ordinary people from custodians to administrators on how to treat gunshots, gashes and other injuries. Stony Brook doctors have reached out to local schools to offer the training, but are looking to expand the program as part of a federal Department of Homeland Security initiative to other schools, colleges and police departments across the country. (AP Photo/Michael Balsamo) (The Associated Press)

Dr. James Vosswinkel, left, the chief of trauma, emergency surgery, and surgical critical care, at Stony Brook University Hospital, demonstrates how to pack a gunshot wound on a fake body part during a first aid training session at Stony Brook University in New York, Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016. A new federal initiative seeks to prevent deaths in terror attacks and school shootings by training ordinary people from custodians to administrators on how to treat gunshots, gashes and other injuries. Stony Brook doctors have reached out to local schools to offer the training, but are looking to expand the program as part of a federal Department of Homeland Security initiative to other schools, colleges and police departments across the country. (AP Photo/Michael Balsamo) (The Associated Press)

A new federal initiative seeks to prevent deaths in terror attacks and school shootings by training ordinary people from custodians to administrators on how to treat gunshots, gashes and other injuries.

The idea is to offer some kind of assistance during the fateful minutes or hours when the wounded are hunkered down waiting for the violence to play out and for actual EMTs to get to the scene.

Such a situation played out in Monday's car-and-knife attack at Ohio State University when one of the 11 wounded victims hid in a campus building for nearly 90 minutes before police gave the all-clear.

Stony Brook University began a series of training sessions this week with school officials using dummy body parts. It hopes to take the program nationwide.