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3 Penhold Fire Fighters and a spouse tell their stories of the terror of the Las Vegas concert shooting

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All the members of the Penhold Fire Department are extremely grateful for the safety of our volunteers and so proud of their efforts in helping the injured and the confused who where caught in this unbelievable incident. Fire Captain Sean Pendergast and his fiancée Fire Fighter Dani Meeres, Senior Fire Fighter Mackenzie Johnston (Max) and his wife Laura. Here is their story:

 From Sean Pendergast:

On Sunday October 1st in Las Vegas:  My fiancé (Danielle Meeres) and I had just met up with our friends (Mackenzie (Max)  and Laura Johnston) to attend the final act at Route 91 Harvest Festival.  Jason Aldean had taken the stage and began performing to a packed house.  Route 91 is an open air country music festival similar to Alberta favorite Big Valley Jamboree.  We were standing between the seating area and the main stage when it started.  Gunshots in rapid succession.  I had recognized the sound quickly but had dismissed it.  My initial thought was that it was gunfire but on the other side of Mandalay Bay, maybe in the Casino.

After a few seconds we started making comments that it must be fireworks, the concert was still playing.  After 10-20 seconds and 3 or so bursts of gunfire, the concert stopped, the lights came on, and a massive wall of people were heading towards us.  There was panic, people running in all directions.  Dani took my hand and we started running, we had plowed over what used to be a bar and were quickly behind the bleacher area with dozens of other patrons running between fences and stands.  A girl had fallen over and people were beginning to fall on top of her, she was being trampled.  We weren’t sure if she was shot or concussed from the fall but she was dazed for sure.  Dani and I started yelling stop stop stop, we got the crowd to stop pushing forward, Dani was focused on the girl, she kept telling her we have to get up, come on get up!  Finally she responded and we helped her up and started running again.

After opening 2 gates by pushing them over we made it to an exit on the strip across the street from the Luxor.  The last time I saw Max and Laura was before the initial gunshots.  We ran down the strip into the Tropicana north east parking lot.  Here we slowed down to walk, I thought how many shots was that? I guessed at well over 200.

As we were walking we heard the shooting start again, again we started running this time across Tropicana Ave to the MGM.  We stopped behind a trailer to catch our breath, assess and decide further action.  At this point we have no idea what has happened, we are worried that it has been a mass shooting, how many gunmen?  They could come into a Casino at any moment and start shooting.  This was the last time we heard gunfire.  We entered the MGM to see if there were any people needing help, we crossed the strip into NYNY and again across Tropicana Ave to Excalibur.

There was a tent set up in the intersection with dozens of ambulances, police and fire.  This was 20 minutes after it started, an amazing response from Police, Fire and EMS.  We tried to talk to some police to offer assistance.  They only wanted people evacuating.  Ok, we can’t help here, lets evacuate, but where are Max and Laura?  Missed phone calls and texts from them saying they are on the roof of the Tropicana.  We will come get you I said.  Back to NYNY then to MGM and across to Tropicana.  The hotel was all locked up, security said we could not go in.  I said my friends are on the roof of your casino, we are going in to get them.  He assured us there was no way to get onto the roof of the casino, “but they ARE on the roof” I said.  He let us pass and told us of a way they may have got onto the roof (somewhere near the second floor bathroom).  We ran up the stairs to find a man on an office chair with a bullet wound in his knee being helped by two others..  Dani presented herself as an Intensive Care Nurse, she took control of his leg and they started to lift him down the escalator.  “This isn’t going to work, call the elevator” one man said.  I ran over to the elevator on the other side of the mezzanine, hit the call button.  Dani got in the elevator with the man, I said to her “are you ok?, you have this? Do you have your phone? I’m going to get Max and Laura!”  She replied “yup”.

I ran to the bathroom area, found an open unmarked door that led to the roof of the casino.  Max had said they were up some scaffolding.  I found it, climbed up and called their names.  They came over right away.  We descended the scaffolding and all of the sudden people started running in from the casino.  We all ran into a rooftop storage area to hide.  In here Max took a phone call from Dani, we started to make a game plan..  We were going to get off the roof, find Dani and get as far away from the strip as we could.

One guy in the room with us starting yelling and panicking.  I tried to calm him down, said there are dozens of ambulances and an operations tent outside the hotel and they wouldn’t be staging in a danger area.  “how the f*ck would you know?” he yelled.  “We are firefighters” I said back.  The room calmed and two girls came up to us to ask if they could come with us far enough to get into their hotel room that was in the same casino we were on the roof of.  I said sure, and told everyone else that shelter in place is a good idea right now, let someone know where you are and stay put, the only reason we are leaving is to find my Fiance.  Some people wanted to exit the storage area through a second door, an employee sheltered with us told them not to, saying they would fall through the roof of the casino.  Great I thought, as if we don’t have enough stuff to deal with someone might breach that door and fall through the roof.  Max and I had to take control of the situation assuring people to stay away from the second door.  We left sneaking through the doorways and into the casino.  We carefully walked towards the elevators that the girls needed.  There were Paramedics being escorted by highly armed police, they told us to get out.  We dropped the girls at their elevator and went the opposite way of the police, looking for Dani.

When we found Dani on the casino floor she had a straggler with her.  Debbie was her name, her sister was in the Tropicana in a room somewhere.  We started to head down a conference room hallway, the 4 of us finally reunited plus Debbie..  As we inched closer to the exit Debbie started crying saying she couldn’t exit the hotel, her sister was inside.  We all took turns calming her down and eventually we got her out the door where we found two security guards who were (sheltering in place) of a restaurant kitchen.  We left Debbie with them, and made our way East.  We then came to the Hooters hotel.  There was crime scene tape and a dead body out front.  We walked towards the casino and were given water by an employee.  We stopped here for a bathroom break.  Deciding that there was too many people here, we went east again.  We made a stop at a beer store to buy two jugs of water and a pile of granola bars.

Travelling east we found the Grand Canyon Helicopter tours building.  There was a concrete alcove behind some bushes.  We set up camp here for a few hours to text our families, drink some water and rest a bit.  3 hours after the initial gunshots we flagged down a cop outside fo the grand canyon tour building.  The cop said we could start making our way back to our hotel and that it was under control.  We started walking, ran into a police check stop, they diverted us first to the north side of Tropicana Ave, then told us we couldn’t go down Tropicana at all.  They were confused and unsure.  We went north weaving around all the road blocks and swat crews until we finally made it back to the strip at the Monte Carlo.  This was as far south as they would let us.  We went inside to find the refuge area, it was full, no towels, and no blankets left, 3 apples and no water.  We left there, going north again.  Once we got to Aria we could get a taxi.  The taxi driver took us to the Marriot where we bought a room and tried to get some sleep.  In the morning we woke up, were able to return to the Excalibur to collect our things, and went to the airport to fly home.

 

From Danielle during the split up at the Tropicana: 

We went down the elevator, tried to exit the front door with the victim.  Police immediately started yelling at us to go back in and that we could not exit.  We hid behind the front desk, I found some towels to wrap around the gunshot victim.  His name was Bobby.  We went to the other side of the casino, pushing Bobby on an office chair to a side exit where a paramedic took him to an ambulance.  The two other guys helping Bobby where an off duty firefighter and an EMT.  I went up top to help another girl who had a gunshot wound to the chest.  She had already been helped down the stairs and to the medics.  I then Called my fiancé Sean but the phones would not connect, I tried Max and got through.  We all met up a few seconds later.

 

From Max Johnston and Laura Johnston:

Our account of what happened starts the same as Sean and Dani’s account. We were separated from them very shortly after we realized that it was in fact gun fire. We could hear bullets hitting the ground and at one point I yelled to Laura “get down” and she dropped in place, there was a lull in shots and I yelled to her to get back up and we took off through a gap in the food trucks, this is when we had lost Sean and Dani.  As this was happening we saw a young woman with a gunshot wound in her chest area, The rushing crowd would not allow us to get over to help her and she was already being assisted so we moved on towards the exit. The shooting didn’t stop until we made it to the back doors of the Tropicana hotel.

We both felt relieved to be inside and away from the shooting so we stopped and caught our breath. Then suddenly everyone started screaming and running back the other way because it was rumoured that a shooter had entered the front of the casino. Laura and I were separated from each other at this point because she got stuck in the crowd of moving people. Laura”( I could hear him screaming my name but could not make it to him and continued to run out a back door as I knew he would come for me when he could)”. Once it was safe to move I ran towards where I had last seen her and we reunited just inside the pool doors at the back of the resort. We then proceeded to move through the Tropicana, we had stayed here before so laura suggested we get to an area where there weren’t as many people but we were denied access. We were then corralled through a door near the bathrooms and told it was an emergency exit. Unfortunately we ended up on the casino floor roof with about 200 people. We were not comfortable being in such a large group and were trying to find a way off the roof, we found an unlocked door that led to the kitchen and proceeded in but that did not feel right either as we talked with others who saw us open this door and so we exited to find another way off the roof. We could not get off at this point so we split off from the group and found a secure area on another level of the roof.

At this point we called and texted Sean to make sure they made it out and were ok. He replied that they were ok and at the MGM. We decided to stay and wait for them to get to the Tropicana before moving as to not lose them again and once Sean made the roof we started heading down. This is where Sean covers what happened on the roof and from here on out we were together and worked as a team to keep each other focused and comforted, as well as the people that we helped to get to safely.

 

Danielle Meeres is a Firefighter on the Penhold Fire Department.  She is a Nurse in ICU at the Red Deer Hospital.

Sean Pendergast is a Captain on the Penhold Fire Department.  He is a specialist with Weatherford Canada.

Laura Johnston is a caseworker with the Alberta government

Mackenzie (Max) Johnston is a Senior Firefighter on the Penhold Fire Department.  He is a Heavy Duty Technician with Rocky Mountain Phoenix

 

All of the General admission concert goers wore a purple fabric bracelet.  Without scissors or a knife it is impossible to take off.  Everyone who saw us wearing these bracelets for the next 12 hours would say “Oh my god, you were there, I’m so sorry.” Don’t feel sorry for me, feel sorry for the victims.  We were marked.  Cutting that bracelet off was like lifting a weight off my shoulder.

Las Vegas is one of the most prepared cities in the world, the response by all Police, Fire and EMS was incredible.  There were also countless off duty Police, Fire and EMS at the concert who risked their lives to save others.

The casualties should be remembered, feel sad and sorry for them.  The shooter should be forgotten, don’t feel angry or hate for him.

The four of us are working through this together.  We all have access to assistance programs through our full time jobs and always have the Penhold Fire Department to back us up, we have each other and we have family.

After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson slams CBC for only interviewing pro-LGBT doctors about UK report on child ‘sex changes’

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

The recently published Cass Review found that ‘gender medicine’ is ‘built on shaky foundations’ and recommended against surgical or pharmaceutical intervention for gender-confused children.

Dr. Jordan Peterson has condemned the government-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for handpicking doctors to discuss evidence against the gender “transitioning” of children.   

In an April 15 X post, Peterson blasted the CBC for only selecting pro-LBGT doctors to discuss the U.K. National Health Service’s Cass Review, which exposes the dangers of “transitioning” children through mutilating means, such as pharmaceutical drugs and surgeries.

“All the truth the unrepentant butcher-enablers at @CBCNews are capable of is invisibly hidden in this one line: ‘Canadian doctors who spoke to CBC disagree…’” he slammed.   

“Right. All the ‘doctors’ who spoke to @CBCNews were chosen because they disagreed,” Peterson asserted.   

“I find them detestable,” he added. “Everything they publish is a lie in one damned way or another.”   

“And these lies lead to the crimes against humanity denounced by the Cass report.” 

The Cass Review, published earlier this month, is the world’s largest review into “transgender” interventions for minors. Dr. Hilary Cass, the pediatrician commissioned by the UK’s National Health Service to review the transgender “services” being made available to gender-confused minors, is scathing in her analysis.  

Cass found that “gender medicine” is “built on shaky foundations,” and that while these drastic interventions should be approached with extreme caution, “quite the reverse happened in the field of gender care [sic] for children.”  

However, the report was not well received by the CBC, which ran an article criticizing the report and the U.K.’s recent decision to ban puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for youth under 16.  

“While experts in the field say more studies should be done, Canadian doctors who spoke to CBC News disagree with the finding that there isn’t enough evidence puberty blockers can help,” the CBC wrote.  

However, as Peterson pointed out, the CBC only interviewed pro-LGBT doctors who supported their agenda, including one who suggested that “transgender” surgeries are as natural as giving birth.  

“That would be kind of like saying for a pregnant woman, since we lacked randomized clinical trials for the care of people in pregnancy, we’re not going to provide care for you… It’s completely unethical,” Dr. Jake Donaldson, a Calgary physician who treats “transgender” patients, told CBC.  

“There actually is a lot of evidence, just not in the form of randomized clinical trials,” he added.  

On the same day as the CBC report, Calgary pediatrician Dr. J. Edward Les wrote an article published by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, agreeing with the Cass Review conclusions.

“If nothing else, the scathing final report of the Cass Review released this week (but commissioned four years ago to investigate the disturbing practices of the UK’s Gender Identity Service), is a reminder that doctors historically are guilty of many sins,” he wrote in his opening line.  

Les also blasted the Canadian law, particularly Bill C-4, which banned a number of practices considered to be “conversion therapy,” including “any practice, service or treatment designed to change a person’s gender identity.”  

“As far as I know, no one has been charged, let alone imprisoned, since the bill was passed into law,” wrote the doctor. “But it certainly has cast a chill on the willingness of providers to deliver appropriate counselling to gender-confused children: few dare to risk it.”  

Indeed, while the CBC was unable or perhaps unwilling to find doctors who agreed with the Cass report, Les is hardly alone in challenging the LGBT narrative surrounding the mutilation of the gender-confused, especially minors.

LifeSiteNews has compiled a list of medical professions and experts who warn against “transgender” surgeries, warning of irreversible changes and lifelong side effects.     

Moreover, internal documents from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) have shown that doctors who offer so-called “gender-affirming care” know that transgender hormones cause serious diseases, including cancer, but prescribed them anyway.  

The internal documents, dubbed the “WPATH FILES,” include emails and messages from a private discussion forum by doctors, as well as statements from a video call of WPATH members. The files reveal that the doctors working for WPATH know that so-called “gender-affirming care” can cause severe mental and physical disease and that it is impossible for minors to give “informed consent” to it.   

As LifeSiteNews has previously noted, research does not support the assertions from transgender activists that surgical or pharmaceutical intervention to “affirm” confusion is “necessary medical care” or that it is helpful in preventing the suicides of gender-confused individuals.    

In fact, in addition to asserting a false reality that one’s sex can be changed, transgender surgeries and drugs have been linked to permanent physical and psychological damage, including cardiovascular diseases, loss of bone density, cancer, strokes and blood clots, infertility, and suicidality.     

There is also  overwhelming evidence that those who undergo “gender transitioning” are more likely to commit suicide than those who are not given irreversible surgery. A Swedish study found that those who underwent “gender reassignment” surgery ended up with a 19.2 times greater risk of suicide.    

Indeed, there is proof that the most loving and helpful approach to people who think they are a different sex is not to validate them in their confusion but to show them the truth.     

A new study on the side effects of transgender “sex change” surgeries discovered that 81 percent of those who had undergone “sex change” surgeries in the past five years reported experiencing pain simply from normal movement in the weeks and months that followed — and that many other side effects manifest as well.

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Censorship Industrial Complex

NPR senior editor admits extreme bias in Russia collusion, Hunter Biden laptop, COVID coverage

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From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

‘There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. … one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies … ’

A longtime senior editor at National Public Radio (NPR) published a blistering critique of the government-funded “news” outlet’s extreme liberal bias, citing how NPR willfully “turned a blind eye” to the truth concerning alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the origin of COVID-19.

The Free Press’ explosive 3,500-word op-ed “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.” by Uri Berliner confirms what many heartland Americans have known for decades: “An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.”

“Our news audience doesn’t come close to reflecting America,” wrote Berliner, who has worked at NPR for 25 years. “It’s overwhelmingly white and progressive, and clustered around coastal cities and college towns.”

Berliner paints a picture of an organization driven by DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) that almost always “defaulted to ideological story lines,” and is damaged by “the absence of viewpoint diversity.”

“I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans,” Berliner wrote. “None.”

When he presented his findings at an all-hands editorial staff meeting, suggesting “we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference.”

Berliner draws attention to three enormous examples of NPR’s blindness regarding enormously important stories, a blindness that likely produced real-world consequences concerning the two most recent U.S. presidential elections and COVID-19 policies.

Russia collusion hoax

“Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting,” Berliner said. “At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.”

“But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse,” Berliner confessed. “Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.”

“It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story,” Berliner allowed. “What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards of transparency from public figures and institutions but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.”

Hunter Biden’s laptop ignored ‘because it could help Trump’

After the New York Post published a shocking report about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop just weeks before the 2020 election, “NPR turned a blind eye.”

NPR’s managing editor dismissed the important story, saying “we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”

“But it wasn’t a pure distraction, or a product of Russian disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials suggested,” Berliner wrote. “The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence peddling and its possible implications for his father.”

“The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched,” he continued. “During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump.”

NPR’s COVID-19 pandemic coverage ‘defaulted to ideological story lines’

Berliner described how NPR’s COVID-19 coverage fervently embraced a one-sided political narrative, promoting the notion that the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan while totally disregarding the possibility that it might have escaped from a Wuhan lab.

“The lab leak theory came in for rough treatment almost immediately, dismissed as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory,” Berliner said. “Anthony Fauci and former NIH head Francis Collins, representing the public health establishment, were its most notable critics. And that was enough for NPR. We became fervent members of Team Natural Origin, even declaring that the lab leak had been debunked by scientists.

“Reporting on a possible lab leak soon became radioactive,” Berliner said. “But the lab leak hypothesis wouldn’t die.

“Over the course of the pandemic, a number of investigative journalists made compelling, if not conclusive, cases for the lab leak. But at NPR, we weren’t about to swivel or even tiptoe away from the insistence with which we backed the natural origin story,” Berliner wrote. “We didn’t budge when the Energy Department — the federal agency with the most expertise about laboratories and biological research — concluded, albeit with low confidence, that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the emergence of the virus.”

“Instead, we introduced our coverage of that development on February 28, 2023, by asserting confidently that ‘the scientific evidence overwhelmingly points to a natural origin for the virus.’”

In all three cases, “politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that ought to have been driving our work.”

DEI now trumps journalistic principles at NPR

“To truly understand how independent journalism suffered at NPR, you need to step inside the organization,” explained Berliner, who emphasized that the most damaging development at NPR over the last few years has been the absence of viewpoint diversity.

DEI considerations trumped journalistic principles. “Identity” groups within the organization — including Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media and NPR Pride (LGBTQIA employees at NPR) are now “given a seat at the table in determining the terms and vocabulary of our news coverage.”

“There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless — one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies,” Berliner said. “It’s almost like an assembly line.”

Berliner concluded:

With declining ratings, sorry levels of trust, and an audience that has become less diverse over time, the trajectory for NPR is not promising. Two paths seem clear. We can keep doing what we’re doing, hoping it will all work out. Or we could start over, with the basic building blocks of journalism. We could face up to where we’ve gone wrong. News organizations don’t go in for that kind of reckoning. But there’s a good reason for NPR to be the first: we’re the ones with the word public in our name.

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