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Police Working To Determine Gunman's Motive; Police Release Officer's Body Camera Video; Shooter's Girlfriend Marilou Danley Back In U.S.; Heroes Helped Save Lives In Sunday Night's Shooting; Two Survivors Rescued The Wounded In Their Truck; Massacre Survivors Recount Terrifying Moments; Hurricane Death Toll In Puerto Rico Rises To 34; U.S. President Praises Response To Disaster; Trump Compares Maria And Katrina Death Tolls; Catalonian Referendum. Aired 1-2a ET

Aired October 4, 2017 - 01:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[01:00:00] ISHA SESAY, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers around the world. I'm Isha Sesay in Los Angeles.

JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: I'm John Vause. It's just now 10:00 p.m. on the U.S. West Coast. Police in Las Vegas are revealing new details in the massacre of 58 people at a country music concert, but they seem no closer to a murder for the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

SESAY: New pictures published by the Daily Mail show the hotel room rented by the gunman, Stephen Paddock, his dead body lying on the floor. All around him, as you there, assault rifles ammunition and spent shell casings used in Sunday's shooting.

VAUSE: Outside his suite, a room service cart where Paddock set up two cameras to monitor for police. Investigators found another camera in the peephole of the hotel room door. And late Tuesday, police released body camera footage showing the response to the shooting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go that way. Go that way.

(GUNFIRE)

(POLICE CAR SIRENS)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: Well, joining us now from Las Vegas is CNN, Scott McClean. And Scott, the shooter's girlfriend, Marilou Danley, has been called a person of interest in authority. She is now back in the United States, landing in L.A. just short time ago. What more can you tell us about her movements, her actions with investigators?

SCOTT MCCLEAN, CNN REPORTER: Yes. Isha, we know that she was on a flight from Manila, in the Philippines, to LAX in Los Angeles. She arrived just after 7:00 local time in the L.A., this is according to immigration officials in the Philippines and also from FBI sources who are a speaker to our Evan Perez. Now, they say that they are not in a rush to get Danley to Las Vegas, of course, it's just a couple of hours in a car from L.A. to Las Vegas, it's also a really short flight.

It's possible that she could be on a flight tonight, but we just don't know at that point. We also don't know whether FBI investigators are going to be questioning her right when she lands at LAX or whether they'll take her off-site somewhere or whether they'll give her, you know, a day or two to decompress before they actually interview her. Those are the unknowns that we don't know. Now, as you said, she is a person of interest in this case.

She is not a suspect in this case, but she is the long-time girlfriend of Stephen Paddock, the suspect in this case, and she could hold a lot of clues as to why he what he did. One other thing to point out is that we are also learning that Paddock had wired some $100,000 to the Philippines. What we don't know is when it was wired or who exactly received it, this is according to FBI sources. And so, it's possible that Danley could hold the answers to a lot of these unknown questions that we have.

SESAY: Yes, absolutely. Many people wanting to hear what she has to say. Scott, investigators revealed new details on Tuesday evening, what are we learning?

MCCLEAN: Well, first off, we know how long this massacre actually took place for. It's somewhere between nice and 11 minutes that Stephen Paddock was on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel shooting out over this concert venue, which was a couple football fields away from that hotel using a very high-powered, long rifles or guns. He had more than 20 of them in that room. We're also learning more about the types of weapons that he used. Of course, in this country, automatic weapons for civilians are, in general, not allowed.

What you can have are semi-automatic weapons, which basically means you need to pull the trigger individually for every single bullet that's fired. But based on photographs and based on confirmation from police, he had modified some 12 of those guns with something called a bump stock, what is that? Well, it's basically something that overrides the need to pull the trigger over and over again, which basically allows you to just hold it down and fire several bullets at a time, and that's how he was able to unload so many rounds onto the victims below who were scrambling for their lives. Isha.

[01:05:39] SESAY: Truly terrifying. More details still to come in the days ahead. Scott McClean joining us there from Las Vegas. We appreciate it, Scott, thank you.

VAUSE: Well, in the midst of the carnage of Sunday night as thousands of people ran panic and terrified, there were a few, who despite the danger and the risk, stayed in the line of fire to help the wounded.

SESAY: So many hero stories coming out. Like Lindsey Padget and Mark Jay, they made it out alive but when they reached their truck in a parking lot across the street, they went back to help. Here is that moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LINDSEY PADGET, SURVIVOR: Oh my God.

MARK JAY, SURVIVOR: Hey, right now, we need your truck. We just need to get people over to the hospital, OK?

PADGET: OK, go ahead. Put them all in the back.

JAY: Can pull over towards the side over there? You know what, this person right here. Hold up. Hold up. Can we get this person in here?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: And Lindsey and her fiance, Mark, join us now from Las Vegas. Thanks so much for being with us. It's been two days now, how are you both holding up?

PADGET: I mean, we're just, you know, taking it day by day. We're obviously doing a lot better than we were yesterday. We just -- we just want to say sorry to everyone's families, obviously. We're very lucky to be here today, so, you know, our heart goes out to just all the families that are hurting right now.

VAUSE: Mark, how about? It's obviously been such a difficult time for so many people.

JAY: Yes. I don't know, I don't even know what to say. You know, I'm just glad we made it out alive, and I'm glad we could help some people.

VAUSE: You know, we're learning so much more about, you know, the high-degree of planning which went into this attack. I want to get to what you did on Sunday, but first, I want to get your reaction to this because they found an incredible amount of ammunition in that suite, at least 23 firearms, 12 were rapid fire. Knowing all those details now, it must be incredibly chilling when you think about what actually happened on Sunday night.

PADGET: Yes, it is.

VAUSE: Does it explain a lot about how many rounds were fired?

PADGET: I feel like I heard over a thousand. I don't really know.

JAY: Yes. I mean, the rate that it was going, you just -- it went on for, you know --

PADGET: It seemed like a really long time.

VAUSE: Yes, I cannot even imagine. I want to show another moment from Sunday night. This is when they started to bring some of the wounded to your truck. I want to share that with your audience. Here it is

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PADGET: Oh my God.

(PHONE RINGING)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a headshot here. We have a head shot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: Lindsey, can you explain what you were thinking at that moment when you saw all those wounded people?

PADGET: Just, I mean, heartbreak. I was in awe, I was in shock, I was -- I couldn't believe what was going on. Just really painful. You can't even really explain it, to be honest. Words don't do justice what we saw.

VAUSE: And Mark, you guys actually made it out alive. You got to the parking lot across the street and you went back. Was that, you know a thoughtful decision or was it just simply something you did out of instinct?

JAY: It was just something we did out of instinct. Most things we did, we didn't think about it, it was just -- we just had to help people, you know. We just had to do the best we could. And when they asked us, you know, can we put people in your car, the first thing we thought -- if you see, there's no hesitation, it's like let's get it done.

VAUSE: So, Mark, do you remember the details of how that process actually worked itself out? Was it just simply chaos? Was it the closest people to the truck managed to get into the truck? Or was somebody there saying, hey, these people are really seriously hurt, they need to get to the hospital because I think you end up taking five people to the hospital?

[01:10:07] JAY: Yes, we ended up taking five, and, yes, when they started deciding who to put in and they were going with who's really hurt, who was close. You know, we ended up putting people in. One guy had shots in his chest where he was holding his fingers in it. Another kid, you know, he was almost dead and he was shot in the back. We had people shot in their leg, shot in their hips, it's like a -- it's pretty much whoever we can get in there, let's get them in there.

VAUSE: Lindsey, I'm assuming you are driving because it was your truck. So, you got five people --

PADGET: No, Mark was actually driving.

VAUSE: OK. Well, Mark's driving, you're in the front, you've got five wounded as well as a bunch of people there to help them. So, you decided to head to the hospital. Could you still hear the gunfire at that point?

PADGET: No.

VAUSE: It had stopped? PADGET: It was stopped, yes.

VAUSE: OK. So, you make this decision to go to the hospital. What happens next?

PADGET: We were trying to find a way to the hospital. We were told to go to Sunrise and roads were blocked off. Then, we were told to go UMC. We made it to the freeway around Tropicana before we stopped some cops and they said to pull over, they had a paramedic for us. And we were able to get some of the people who were seriously injured into the car and -- we tried to -- Mark, my fiance, tried to put the kid in the car first and they actually pulled him. They needed to pull him back out because they said that he was dead. So, they -- we replaced him with other people that were in my truck and we put him back in the bed of the truck and kept the people in the backseat, in the backseat and followed them to UMC, but I think we ended up at Valley.

VAUSE: Right. Mark, so, one person, sadly, you know, out of the five didn't make it. Do you know about what happened to the other four?

JAY: Yes. All the other four, from what we understand, they all lived. The only one that passed though ended up getting him to the hospital. But all others, all others survived that we heard of.

VAUSE: You did an incredible, amazing thing. Obviously, there are four people who quite literally owe you their lives right now. It was incredibly brave. So, I wish all the best and, you know, I hope that you work through this, and you know, best of luck to you both. Thank you.

PADGET: Thank you.

SESAY: Well, Officer Joe Nuren, joins us now by phone. He was there at the music festival. He was off-duty from work when the shooting occurred. Joe, thank you so much for joining us, what I know it's a very, very difficult time for you and thousands of other people. I know that for many people who were there at that concert, they heard those gunshots and initially thought that basically, they were hearing fireworks. Tell me about the moment you realized that this was something very different and deadly.

JOE NOREN, POLICE OFFICER: When the fire -- when the rounds started going off, immediately didn't sound right at all. Something just didn't click. And the reason why is everybody around me and around my wife and I said this is just fireworks, everybody, just relax. And all the sporting events, all the concerts I've been to where there were fireworks, the lights really go off. But in this instance, whoever's running the lighting turned all the lights on in the arena, turned on all the lights on stage, turned all the lights on. And with that, I realized these aren't fireworks. And with the training that I've had as a police officer, I realized that the pattern did not mimic those of fireworks, these were coming from an automatic rifle.

SESAY: And that's the thing. I mean, so, you get the moment where you say it's fireworks, this is gunfire, but then one of the scariest parts in all of this, I'd imagine, and you see the panic when you look at the video is that you just don't know where it's coming from. And that must've just been terrifying for you and your wife and everyone around you.

NOREN: Absolutely. At that the moment, I -- once I realized it was gunfire, I looked around and we had -- I witnessed fathers pushing strollers across the arena and they're going so fast, running so fast -- it almost seemed like the stroller wasn't even touching the ground. We had mothers holding babies tightly and running away. And there was carnage not far from me. My wife and two other ladies who were just strangers to us, they were just frozen; they could not run. So, I told them, I said, listen, if we don't run, you need to lay down on your stomach and you're going to have to play dead, just pretend we're dead.

[01:15:18] I draped my body across theirs and were pinned down for good three minutes. I would say three minutes, two to 300 rounds. If I had to guess, I would say minimum 200 rounds, and there were -- there were rounds that were hitting the turf, the right, three to four inches from my eyes and particles of the ground would hit me in my eyes. It was just something that it was surreal. I -- it almost seemed like time had stopped except for the gunfire.

SESAY: Yes. It must've felt -- it must have felt like an eternity. You're a police officer, you're off that night, just trying to have a good time, and then you see this playing out around you. You decided to shelter victims in your R.V., explain to us, I mean, why you decided to go that route, what was the plan in your head?

NOREN: What occurred after that prior to the -- prior to me taking in strangers in my R.V., I came across a gentleman who was laying there with a gunshot wound to his leg and he was unable to good anywhere, and people were just evacuating as quick as possible running over him. I stopped, told him I was an off-duty police officer, asked him to let me see the wound. I removed my belt, put a tourniquet on his femur and myself and my wife and another individual, we carried that gentleman for a good half a mile into the airport. And we tore the fence the away, myself and some other individuals tore the fence away. We got him safely into an airport hangar where about 30 minutes after that medics came.

And at that moment, I had a friend who was at my R.V., I called -- we got a hold of each other, I said, can you come get us from the Thomas Mac Center, the convention center? He said I'm on my way. When he pulled up, I grabbed my wife's hand. I told the other lady, they said Godless you, just take care of yourself and be safe. And they grabbed my legs, they grabbed my hands and said, please don't leave us. We have nobody. And half of them were staying at the Mandalay Bay, so they don't have anyone. The one got disconnected from her husband and who actually was injured and was in the hospital. So, we decided to take these people, take these young ladies under our wings.

SESAY: Wow.

NOREN: We stuffed ten people into my truck and we took them back to our R.V. and we fed them, we comforted them, we let them shower, and let them charge their phones. Until the next morning, when they were able to contact loved ones and friends and be reunited with those that they came with.

SESAY: Joe, I have to ask you what it was like in the R.V. with those ten people. What was it like? I mean, so distress, so much fear, people were separated from their loved ones.

NOREN: It was devastating for myself. The years that I've been a police officer, I've never ever seen anything like it. The faces of these -- even though they were not physically harmed, they were mentally, emotionally harmed, so I will refer to them as victims. These victims were devastated. I looked into their eyes, and there was just emptiness. And we decided, you know, I decided, let's just get them comforted, everything is going to be OK. And we tried our best. I would say there were moments of extreme silence but then there were other moments of laughter because we were trying to make the most out of the situation just to keep their mind from it. And I kept telling them, I said, listen, you can hear my voice right now, that means you're alive. So, that means we are OK. We're -- I will -- you will get home.

SESAY: And before I let you go, how are you? How are you doing after such an extraordinary act of bravery on the part of you and your wife, how are you coping?

NOREN: This morning, I woke up and it finally settled in. It -- my mind was overflowing and there was nothing else I could absorb. And I would have to say that the next few days, the next few weeks, the next few months, maybe the next few years, this is going to continue to replay in my mind over and over and over again. But I will tell you the one thing that brings me comfort and solace is the fact that I disconnected from my wife for a little bit and came back to her, and within 30 seconds after finding her in a crowd of thousands and thousands of people, I found my wife. And 30 seconds after that is when the gunfire rang out.

[01:20:35] SESAY: Yes.

NOREN: And I cannot even imagine what it would have been like if I did not have her hand, holding her when that gunfire rang out because this could've played out much more different.

SESAY: It definitely could have and we're thankful it played out the way it did for you and your wife, and thank you. Thank you, Joe, for joining us and just telling us about the nightmare and your extraordinary act of bravery. And we're just -- we're going to be rooting for you in the days ahead, for you and your wife and everyone involved in this, that you find a path to healing. So, take good care of yourself and thank you for speaking to us.

NOREN: Thank you very much.

VAUSE: We'll have a lot more stories like this in the coming days.

SESAY: Yes. VAUSE: OK. With that, a short break. When we come back, U.S. President Donald Trump giving himself high marks for the recovery efforts in Puerto Rico, but his comments and actions on the island on Tuesday are, in fact, sparking something controversy. We'll have a reality check next here on "NEWSROOM L.A."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SESAY: Welcome back, everyone. We're going to bring you more on the mass shooting in Las Vegas in just a moment. But first, let's head to Puerto Rico where Hurricane Maria's death toll has risen now to 34.

VAUSE: Few weeks since the island was battered by the Category 4 storm, and still about half of the population doesn't have running water, less than seven percent has electricity. Distributing food and supplies to many parts of the island remain a major problem.

SESAY: Well, U.S. President Donald Trump, visited Puerto Rico, Tuesday. He met storm victims in an area where home suffered no major damage. He also repeatedly praised his administration for its relief efforts and downplayed the devastation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Every death is a horror. But if you look at and read catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died. And you look at what happened here, what is your death counts of this moment? 17?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 16.

TRUMP: 16 people, certified. 16 people versus in the thousands. You can be very proud of all of your people, all of our people working together.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: Joining us now, CNN Political Commentators, Democratic Strategist, Dave Jacobson; and Republican Consultant John Thomas. OK. So, obviously, the death toll went up since the president visited Puerto Rico today. So apart from implying that Hurricane Maria wasn't a real disaster because its death toll was much lower than Katrina 12 years ago, the president joked about the cost of recovery efforts saying, it put the budget out of whack.

[01:25:13] At one point, we're handing relief supplies, he began throwing paper towels into the crowd. He told them they didn't need flashlights, which they do because they don't have any electricity, and he also said how great the weather was in Puerto Rico, and told a -- someone who was living in a house without electricity, have fun. So, Dave, in other words, he was true to form.

DAVE JACOBSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Conventional Donald Trump presidency. It's a national disgrace, bottom line. The fact is, this is a guy who didn't get the death toll right. I mean, today, we saw it was 34 people who were killed. You would think like, from the very basics, presidency 101, you'd get a fact sheet of how many people were killed in the hurricane. And the fact is, he got 50 percent of the number wrong.

But Donald Trump thinks this is a joke and that's the problem, and Donald Trump says, oh, well there's this big, there's this vast ocean in between us in Puerto Rico. What would he do if something like that happened to Hawaii or Guam? I mean, they're even further away than we are -- or Alaska, right? I mean, obviously, there's land in between us and Alaska but -- I mean, it raises real questions of whether or not he's committed to protecting American citizens.

SESAY: And John, the San Juan Mayor, Carmen Yulin Cruz, basically said that she found the president's remarks insulting and referred them as the miscommunicator in chief. I mean, regardless of what the president's intentions were, people there on the island were felt insulted by it by it, at least some people did.

JOHN THOMAS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND REPUBLICAN CONSULTANT: Sure.

SESAY: You know, again, it comes back to: why can't he get his tone right in these moments?

VAUSE: At least for a couple of hours.

THOMAS: No doubt about it. From a public relation's standpoint, I don't think did he a good job today. I mean, there's nothing even to make a light of the circumstance. I mean, death is too many on this circumstance. What I do think is slightly unfair and I understand where the president was coming from in a way of his trying to courage the good works that a lot of those in the government have been doing. I mean, there are -- last I heard there are 11,000 government workers that are there helping people. I mean, certainly, there's a lot to do --

VAUSE: All of that reflects on him, though. It's like, you're doing a good job, therefore I'm doing a good job.

THOMAS: Yes. There's no doubt about it, I'm not denying that. He could've done it more smoothly, and in terms of, you know, the mayor, he's obviously had a spat with her. There's been a fair share of criticisms about how she wasn't in touch with FEMA command and control and really understanding what the government was doing. So, but regardless, the president's tone should have been more understanding. There's no doubt about that.

VAUSE: OK. The president also spoke to Fox News while he was on the island. He said Puerto Rico's massive debt would actually have to be canceled. This is what he actually said, listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Well, we're going to work something out. We have to look at their whole debt structure. You know, they owe a lot of money to your friends on Wall Street and we're going to have to wipe that out. Just going to have to be, you know, you can say goodbye to that. I don't know if it's Goldman Sachs, but whatever it is, you can wave goodbye to that. We have to do something about it because the debt was massive on the island.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: You know, Dave, how exactly is this going to happen? And is this the promise that the president can keep?

JACOBSON: Well, at a time, when he's proposing massive windfalls and tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires and Wall Street corporations and then he's complaining about funding hurricane recovery efforts. I mean, it begs the question of like, what he's really committed to? Is it just handouts to the wealthy or is it taking care of people that he sworn to protect?

VAUSE: This is (INAUDIBLE).

THOMAS: Yes. I mean, it's huge. I that's -- I would say an overarching statement. The fact, I think, it's showing that the president feels this is a priority. I mean, look, Puerto Rico --

SESAY: Or he just trying to make up for the comments he made earlier in the day when he knows that --

(CROSSTALK)

THOMAS: I don't think he's that strategic. Yes, I don't think he's that strategic. I think he's recognized that Puerto Rico got themselves, is not the hurricane mess, but this financial mess and there's no way for them to recover as a community after this hurricane devastation until they solve this massive debt. Really, without the federal government, I don't know where they go. So, I think this is more of you showing a priority shift, logistically speaking. Speaker Ryan isn't going to say, here, we're striking your debt.

VAUSE: I think your points is was he trying to make up for something? That implies that he thinks he did something wrong which we all know is an impossibility.

(CROSSTALK)

THOMAS: I honestly don't think he's that strategic. I think it's just this is as he toured the island, he's like, you're right, they have a systematic flaw of debt, we've got to fix it.

VAUSE: We're short on time, so we'll leave it there. But good to speak to you both.

[01:29:32] SESAY: Gentlemen, thank you. Quick break here. Next, on NEWSROOM L.A., we'll speak with two doctors who treated victims from the Las Vegas shooting. They are among the heroes of this tragedy.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[01:30:00] (MUSIC PLAYING)

VAUSE (voice-over): Welcome back, everybody. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. I'm John Vause.

SESAY (voice-over): And I'm Isha Sesay. This headlines this hour:

(HEADLINES)

SESAY: Joining me now from Las Vegas is a husband-and-wife couple, Nicholas Fiore and Stephanie Davidson; both work at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center and were called in the night of the shooting.

Stephanie is an anesthesiologist and Nicholas is a pediatric general surgeon.

Welcome to you both. Thank you for joining us.

Stephanie, if I could start with you, I know that you were the only anesthesiologist around in the aftermath of this mass shooting.

As casualties started arriving at your hospital, can you share with us some of what you saw and experienced?

STEPHANIE DAVIDSON, ANESTHESIOLOGIST: Let me just make a correction; two of our in-house trauma anesthesiologists were back in the operating room, already operating when I showed up. I was the next first available anesthesiologist.

So I went directly through the OR; quick assessment, directly to the emergency department, found the -- Dr. McIntyre (ph) and Dr. Massey (ph), the two -- trauma surgeon and the emergency medicine physician.

And then I took point for the operating room. Organized chaos is what comes to mind; over 150 people, nurses, doctors, secretaries, everybody and patients everywhere, noise, lots of noise, smell of blood and organized chaos at that time.

SESAY: Yes.

Nicholas, to you, I know you're a pediatric surgeon, as I just said, but it's my understanding that you jumped in to operate on adult victims. I'm just guessing that you went into autopilot, like everyone did.

What did you end up dealing with?

NICHOLAS FIORE, PEDIATRIC GENERAL SURGEON: Sure, really. It was all hands on deck and there were about 30 surgical subspecialists that were called in. And we dealt with the gunshot wounds, in particular my help with a woman, who was shot in the collarbone.

She was clearly shot from above and the bullet went through her left collarbone, barely missing her blood vessels. Initially we treated her in the emergency room and actually Dr. Davidson put in a breathing tube in her to secure her airway. And then ultimately she went on to have scans and off to the operating room after those scans demonstrated potential injury to the blood vessels in the area.

And I was there for that procedure as well.

SESAY: So how many people do you think you ended up working with, performing surgeries on?

FIORE: Well, I can tell you overall, the Sunrise Hospital cared for about 214 patients. By 6:00 in the morning --

[01:35:00]

FIORE: -- and we operated through the night -- by 6:00 in the morning there were about 27 surgeries that were completed at that point in time.

And, overall, I -- presently there are 60 patients that are still admitted to the hospital; about 30 of those, 31 of those are in critical condition still. Many have had to go back to the operating room as well, to have secondary procedures and may require additional procedures later on.

SESAY: Yes, it's just -- it's heartbreaking.

Stephanie, to you, this happened the way it did, it happened out of the blue one for everyone there at the concert and in terms of the medical facilities responding, very little time to prepare.

I mean, before you know it, there's a rush of patients arriving. Talk to me about the system put in place there at Sunrise, just to deal with this kind of, like, wave after wave of incoming casualties.

DAVIDSON: So you always have a plan. There's disaster plans, disaster drills that are in place and protocols. I refer to it more as an algorithm. And no matter what you train for, you cannot be prepared for a lot of what happens. And I don't think anybody could ever have been prepared for what came to us Sunday night.

So you start down your path and you go with your plan and at any point that you deviate, you do what needs to be done. Ultimately now we know what the goal is. The goal is caring for the patients efficiently and effectively, communicating with the families, the patients, each other and to just maintain what the end point is, which is, again, giving the care that everybody needs and even communicating and caring for ourselves --

(CROSSTALK)

SESAY: And as you mentioned that, let me ask you both that.

But, Nicholas, you can answer first.

How were going to do it?

I mean, you were up close in the middle of this.

How are you doing? I know you've dealt with lots before but this is something of a different order.

FIORE: Oh, there's no question about that. This is something of a different order. In the emergency room area, it was a little bit like the eye of the hurricane. I mean, there were so many people there, there were so many patients to be cared for.

But it was done in them in a rather organized fashion and everyone was available to do their part. They initially were stabilized in the emergency room and then, depending on their mechanism of injury, for example, the patients that had head trauma, gunshot wounds to the head, after they were stabilized and had breathing tubes placed and lines to resuscitate them, they received CAT scans, for example, if they needed to.

And then they were off to a specific area of the hospital. Those with abdominal wounds were stabilized; they went to another area, another intensive care unit. Those with chest wounds, after being stabilized, if they didn't need to go to the OR, all of these places, then they went to a different intensive care unit.

So that was helpful. That kind of helped unload the actual emergency room. In terms of the operating room, I think we were running about 10 or 12 rooms at the time. And the actual part of the operation was almost the easier part. The difficult part for me going out and, number one, finding the families and then once we identified the loved ones from the patients that we've cared for, walking into the waiting area.

And when you do that, you have dozens of people looking at you, wondering if you're going to tell them about their loved one, is their loved one alive? Are they not alive? How have they done with the surgery?

And then you -- you know, obviously, call the name of the person and speak to him in private and bring them out and ultimately bring them to the emergency room or to the recovery room to be with their loved one.

(CROSSTALK)

DAVIDSON: One comment on that --

SESAY: Of course.

DAVIDSON: What kept us going -- I'm sorry -- what kept us going, we heard what the community was doing, bringing food and water and offering anything and everything. And, in a way, it was just this charge to the adrenaline that we had going and this sense of serving our people that were doing everything they could, that couldn't be in the emergency department or the operating room.

They were doing everything they could so we were doing everything we could. We -- as Dr. Fiore referred to, we had created a new triage system that really hadn't existed like that. And we were able to delegate -- I was able to delegate certain of my partners, anesthesiologists, to maintain care in these certain areas.

So we had constant communication between the ICUs, which are a floor above where we were. And down in patients that were critical, that had been stabilized, might become more critical again. Stable patients -- the process is kept going all along.

SESAY: It's incredible.

DAVIDSON: So we put changes in the plan all along, like I said.

FIORE: Yes.

[01:40:00]

SESAY: Dr. Fiore, Dr. Davidson, I want to thank you for what you did that night. I know that thousands say thank you also. And we appreciate you joining us here at CNN to tell your story and your experience. We wish you the best. And thank you again.

FIORE: Thank you. And our hearts go out to all those --

DAVIDSON: Yes.

FIORE: -- involved with it, all those, the families and all the victims of this incredible trauma.

SESAY: Yes. Ours do, too. Take good care of yourselves. Thank you. 'Bye.

VAUSE: OK. And we'll take a short break. Back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SESAY: The king of Spain deciding with the central government and the country's biggest political crisis in decades. King Felipe is condemning Sunday's Catalonian vote for independence as unconstitutional.

He also accused Catalonian leaders of trying to undermine the social and economic stability of Spain.

VAUSE: The king, though, has not spoken about the violent government crackdown, which has left more than 800 people wounded. In the face of intense pressure from Madrid, there's defiance, though, from Catalonia.

Thousands protested in Barcelona on Tuesday, demanding national security forces withdraw from the region.

SESAY: Well, the Spanish central government tried everything it could to block the independence vote in Catalonia. However, for the most part, organizers pulled it off.

VAUSE: And CNN's Erin McLaughlin has an inside look at how they did it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is Barcelona's response to police violence. Tens of thousands took to the streets in a show of solidarity, a counter to the crackdown on the Catalan independence referendum.

In the distance, a face in the crowd, who's asked to remain faceless. He wanted his identity concealed, the potential legal ramifications for what he's done, unclear.

He's one of the activists, ran the logistics at a grammar school turned clandestine polling station in the outskirts of Barcelona.

He says planning for the referendum began with a phone call, asking for volunteers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They know me, that I would help.

MCLAUGHLIN (voice-over): Over three months, calls turned into encrypted messages. Apps such as Telegram and Signal and secret meetings, separatists wary of government spies.

MCLAUGHLIN: So this is one of the ballot boxes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

MCLAUGHLIN: You kept it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

MCLAUGHLIN: Why?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because I had been a difficult and sad back during United States.

MCLAUGHLIN (voice-over): Tells us how they managed to hide them, each component -- the sticker, the lid, the case kept separate, assembled at the last minute.

The night of the vote, the activists camped at the school gym to keep watch over the ballots. By dawn, a line of voters snaked around the corner. While the Catalan police were hands-off, the national police, another story.

They raided a nearby polling station. The potential consequences were clear.

"I was the person in --

[01:45:00]

MCLAUGHLIN (voice-over): "-- charge of that school," he says. "I felt the pressure and was scared that people here would be beaten, that police would storm in violently and hurt many old people, children. My family was there, my parents were there. So that fear was there." They had problems with the voting technology, verifying voters was that much more difficult.

MCLAUGHLIN: Given that there weren't independent monitors present, that there were technical difficulties, do you feel that this referendum was legitimate?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The problem had been that maybe a lot of people don't -- didn't go and go to vote because of maybe fear about the police. And so the result maybe is not the best because then not all the people finally vote. But I think that it's (INAUDIBLE).

MCLAUGHLIN (voice-over): The Spanish government tells a very different story, of an illegal referendum that defies the Spanish courts and democracy, a referendum that has sown division and thrown the country into crisis -- Erin McLaughlin, CNN, Barcelona.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SESAY: (INAUDIBLE) to see how this is going to sort itself out.

VAUSE: You know, it's been bubbling for such a long time.

SESAY: Yes, yes.

VAUSE: (INAUDIBLE) --

(CROSSTALK)

VAUSE: -- see where it goes.

SESAY: Yes.

You've been watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. I'm Isha Sesay.

VAUSE: I'm John Vause. "WORLD SPORT" is next and we'll have all the latest from Las Vegas and Puerto Rico (INAUDIBLE).