Moscow had nearly 60 hours to prepare for possible casualties of the hostage-taking crisis. The city authorities, the Health Ministry and the Emergency Situations Ministry knew there were more than 700 hostages trapped inside the theater, stressed, virtually motionless, hungry and dehydrated, with some suffering from an aggravation of chronic illnesses.
Yet, when commandos and rescue workers started rushing victims out of the gassed theater, there were not enough ambulances to whisk them to hospitals. Some of the unconscious, pale people, including teenagers, were placed in buses with their heads thrown back, despite the danger that they could start vomiting and choke.
Some who made it to hospitals were accomodated on the floor without even a pillow under their heads, while some patients already in the clinics had to give up their beds, even though the city's chief doctor Andrei Seltsovsky claimed that 1,000 beds had been reserved at Moscow clinics.
What is more horrifying is that doctors at these clinics didn't know what their new patients had been poisoned with.
Seltsovsky learned what gas would be used minutes before the storming began at 5:30 a.m. Saturday. But when patients started arriving at hospitals at about 7 a.m., and for hours later, doctors had not been told. Even Sunday night, some doctors said they still did not know what they were up against. By then, for some of the hostages, it was too late.
Instead, medical authorities appealed to Muscovites to donate blood, even though there was only gunshot wound inflicted during the raid and that person died.
Doctors who were tending to the incoming at Hospital No. 1, for instance, were trauma experts. But the poisoned patients needed urgent and specialized care.
Sadly, this should come as no surprise, since there are only 160 beds in all the toxicological units of the city's clinics, with most of them located at the Sklifosovsky emergency care hospital and the Butyrskaya clinic. But this was not where the majority of the patients ended up.
And why didn't the Emergency Situations Ministry, which has an entire center for emergency care, deploy any of its mobile hospitals outside the theater? Wasn't every minute crucial when it came to saving the lives of the hostages?
Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu, who has rushed to the site of virtually every disaster in the past to coordinate rescue work, was conspicuously absent from the scene, even though security officials had repeatedly warned that the entire building could crumble like a house of cards if the hostage-takers detonated their explosives.
Yet, when commandos and rescue workers started rushing victims out of the gassed theater, there were not enough ambulances to whisk them to hospitals. Some of the unconscious, pale people, including teenagers, were placed in buses with their heads thrown back, despite the danger that they could start vomiting and choke.
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What is more horrifying is that doctors at these clinics didn't know what their new patients had been poisoned with.
Seltsovsky learned what gas would be used minutes before the storming began at 5:30 a.m. Saturday. But when patients started arriving at hospitals at about 7 a.m., and for hours later, doctors had not been told. Even Sunday night, some doctors said they still did not know what they were up against. By then, for some of the hostages, it was too late.
Instead, medical authorities appealed to Muscovites to donate blood, even though there was only gunshot wound inflicted during the raid and that person died.
Doctors who were tending to the incoming at Hospital No. 1, for instance, were trauma experts. But the poisoned patients needed urgent and specialized care.
Sadly, this should come as no surprise, since there are only 160 beds in all the toxicological units of the city's clinics, with most of them located at the Sklifosovsky emergency care hospital and the Butyrskaya clinic. But this was not where the majority of the patients ended up.
And why didn't the Emergency Situations Ministry, which has an entire center for emergency care, deploy any of its mobile hospitals outside the theater? Wasn't every minute crucial when it came to saving the lives of the hostages?
Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu, who has rushed to the site of virtually every disaster in the past to coordinate rescue work, was conspicuously absent from the scene, even though security officials had repeatedly warned that the entire building could crumble like a house of cards if the hostage-takers detonated their explosives.