APCO 2018 conference goers were riveted Monday to the sounds, images, video, panic and pain associated with the Las Vegas Strip on Oct. 1, 2017, the night of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

Las Vegas Police Department representatives laid out the tragedy and response of public safety communicators, first responders and investigators assisted by photos, videos and graphics stitched together by the FBI and police.

They concluded the presentation with names and photos of those who died at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival.

A total of 58 died and over 500 were injured when Stephen Paddock fired over 1,000 shots from his suite on 32^nd floor into the crowd gathered for the festival.

Police body camera footage showed Las Vegas police and fire firefighters working together in ways they had trained for: paramedics escorted by armed officers into “warm zones” to quickly give aid to shooting victims on the lot across from the Mandalay Bay.

“It’s imperative that you exercise these things. It’s not enough to talk about it on paper,” Las Vegas Police Department Communications Manager Elliott Davis said, “learning how to work together with our firefighter partners to get assistance to people as fast as possible.”

Davis said crews who have trained together will know what to expect from one another as they respond in their rescue taskforces.

It was 10:05 p.m. when the first shot was fired. “When this all started in the comm center it was a pretty standard Sunday evening. You can imagine when you have no calls to 40 calls in an instant, you have something going on,’’ Davis said.

Here are the specifics:

• 3,691 push-to-talks on the main radio channel.
• Calls flooded into 9-1-1 with a total of 899 calls.
• Cell towers were overloaded.

As public safety communicators and first responders focused on the music festival tragedy, they had to cope with unfounded 9-1-1 calls. Davis said some were sparked as bystanders at nearby hotels saw people fleeing the music festival covered in blood and heard shots echoing down the streets. Calls from hotels, restaurants, casinos and the airport that were not real crime scenes reported shots fired, hostages taken, explosions and fires.

The shooter, Paddock, was a wealthy 64-year-old auditor and accountant who wagered hundreds of thousands of dollars during his stay at the hotel-casino before opening fire from the 32nd floor, said Capt. Jason Letkiewicz, commander of the Las Vegas Police Department Communications Bureau. He said Paddock had purchased 67 firearms that police know of and 24 were recovered from his hotel rooms along with 1,250 spent shell casings. Most or all of the guns were equipped with bump stocks, the device that transforms guns into what are effectively automatic weapons.

Letkiewicz said Paddock was interested in causing even more chaos than he actually accomplished. In his car, police found large amounts of explosives and explosive precursors. And during his shooting spree, Paddock targeted two 600,000-gallon fuel containers at the airport. One of the rounds penetrated a tank but did not result in an explosion.

Paddock killed himself just before police burst into his room. One thing police never established was Paddock’s motive. “He did not state anything at all his intent or why he did it,” Letkiewicz said.