First-responders recount initial chaos of school massacre

First-responders recount initial chaos of school massacre
By Vivian Kuo
CNN
December 19, 2012

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
First-responders recall chaos of Friday's Connecticut school massacre
The worst memory is of the parents' faces waiting for their children
The first-responders say nothing could have prepared them

Newtown, Connecticut (CNN) -- Amid the chaos that first-responder Ray Corbo witnessed on Friday, there is one image that he will never forget.

It isn't the woman who was taken to the hospital after being shot in the foot at Sandy Hook Elementary. It isn't the police officer he saw leaving the school's interior covered in someone's blood.

What will haunt Corbo forever is the memory of parents lined up outside the firehouse just a few hundred feet away from the school, waiting to pick up their children.

"As the children were coming down the street, little by little, classroom by classroom all holding hands, parents were claiming their children," says Corbo, the first assistant fire chief at Newtown Hook and Ladder No. 1. "After a little while, once they claimed their kid and signed them out ... they left.

"There were some sticking around and that's when we realized that they're probably not going to be leaving. They're gonna get the confirmation soon enough that they're not gonna be grabbing their child and hugging them and taking them home."
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