This report is an analysis of the fire service and emergency medical service (EMS) operations and the overall response to the assault on Columbine High School at Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999. Incident command, special operations, and mass casualty emergency medical services are featured.

In any major incident, the efforts of all public safety personnel are inexorably linked. However, this report does not address the overall law enforcement operations, or the concurrent operations of various police commands, the special weapons and tactics (SWAT) teams, or the explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) units. The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office issued a formal report and has released surveillance video and radio transmissions that provide additional information on law enforcement’s efforts during this incident.

For this report, USFA conducted a comprehensive review of internal documentation and interviewed many of the key public safety personnel. Media reports and journal articles also provided insight. Information was gleaned from the timelines of the three dispatch centers: Littleton Police, Littleton Fire/EMS, and Jefferson County Sheriff. These, in turn, were compared and reviewed against the collection of eyewitness accounts and first-responder interviews to capture a reasonable picture of the violent rampage and its impact. Understandably, there are some inconsistencies among the sources of information as to the chronology of events. For this report, the events were reconstructed based on documentation from the primary response agencies.

Near midday on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, the staff and students of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, became targets of yet another U.S. episode of wanton violence. The events of that day shocked the nation as two juvenile offenders carried out a premeditated assault and victimized occupants of the school. Thirteen defenseless individuals were slain, and over 160 students and faculty were triaged – 24 with serious injuries. The two offenders, both Columbine High School students, maniacally unleashed an unprecedented terrorist-style assault using numerous semiautomatic weapons and nearly 100 improvised incendiary and explosive devices. The latter were designed as antipersonnel devices intended to inflict casualties, including harm to responding emergency personnel.

Entering the school building that morning after killing two classmates on the sidewalk, the two students fired their weapons into high-occupancy areas and killed some victims at close range, firing at will, regardless of the victims’ cooperation, the ensuing level of police response, or the risk to themselves. During the assault, the two assailants successfully detonated over 30 improvised incendiary and explosive devices, designed to cause numerous casualties. The incendiary devices included glass containers containing homemade "napalm" and various types and sizes of containers holding flammable liquids (gasoline, kerosene, and white gas). The juvenile offenders also deployed variously sized pressurized, flammable gas (propane) cylinders. The explosive devices consisted of pipe bombs of different sizes that were augmented with nails or pellets, or both, duct-taped to the outside so as to increase the shrapnel yield and the number of casualties. Investigators later located over 60 additional undetonated devices in and around the school.

The offenders also outfitted their own vehicles with incendiary and explosive materials that were deployed as car bombs. These vehicles were discovered in the parking lots adjacent to the school, and were intended as secondary devices to harm people fleeing from the building or to compromise first responders. The perpetrators concluded their rampage by committing suicide.