UMF Mom Recalls Working in the Emergency Room the Night of the Lewiston Shootings
Flowers outside Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. (WGME)
November 15, 2023
Jessica MacDonald, Contributing Writer
As all of the University of Maine at Farmington has been informed, there was a mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine on Wednesday night. Between a bowling alley and a bar, 18 people were killed and at least 13 more were injured. Students and staff alike have been affected. The effects of the local tragedy spread throughout the nation within hours.
Though the entire country has been mourning this devastating event, the impacts have weighed the most on the Lewiston community. One UMF student’s mother, a hospital employee at Central Maine Medical Center (CMMC), was working in Lewiston on that fateful night. She wished to stay anonymous but was willing to briefly tell her story.
“Within 45 minutes the ER was swamped. We don’t expect this sort of thing to ever happen in Maine. But staff came in from all directions… From other departments, even from their homes on their day off… It was amazing to see such a heroic effort. I wasn’t even assigned to the ER, but it was an all-hands-on-deck situation.”
Maine has never seen a mass shooting like this, and CMMC certainly felt it. This shooting in Lewiston was the deadliest shooting in the United States this year, 10th overall, and the deadliest in Maine’s history. Emergency rooms in big cities, or places that have dealt with shootings in the past, have adapted to prepare for mass casualty events like this. Maine, however, has been rated the second-safest state in the country; this sort of event could never have been expected.
When asked about her family at home, she recalled, “I didn’t think I was gonna be able to go home that night. It sounded like they needed us to stay overnight due to all the incoming patients. But within those 45 minutes we worked so diligently to get patients into rooms. We were all under so much pressure and fear… I think it helped us to work more swiftly.”
The heroes at CMMC and surrounding hospitals were able to go home to their families, having saved several lives, but mourning those they couldn’t. WGME reported that as of Saturday, the majority of injured patients at CMMC have been discharged, while four patients still remain in treatment.
