Bondi Beach Hanukkah terror attack teaches valuable lessons to volunteer medics |
The Conversation via Reuters — The 2025 Bondi Beach terrorist attack was different from other terrorism incidents. What stands out was the response.
Lifeguards, off-duty doctors and nurses, and members of the public worked alongside ambulance paramedics and community first-responders to triage and treat the injured. In all, 15 people were killed in the attack on a Hanukkah celebration, in addition to one of the gunmen.
I’m a paramedic, medical doctor, researcher and the clinical lead of Community Health Support – a volunteer medical first-responder charity set up by the Jewish community in Sydney. I had been training our teams for a disaster like this for four years, and helped co-ordinate the organization’s emergency response at Bondi that day.
In a paper published in the Medical Journal of Australia, my colleagues and I describe how our organization prepared for and responded to the Bondi attack, how we helped our community recover, and the lessons we learned.
At 6:42 p.m. on December 14, 2025, two gunmen began shooting at the crowd of about 600 Jewish community members celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Sydney.
Within minutes, emergency lines were overwhelmed with callers.
At the same time, people sheltering from the bullets began applying first aid to their injured friends and family.
Local lifeguards and volunteer lifesavers rushed to the aid of the 42 injured survivors who ended up going to the hospital, and the many more who were treated at the scene. Doctors, nurses and good samaritans, who just happened to be nearby, also responded. These so-called spontaneous or “zero responders” arrived before “first responders” such as ambulance crews, Community Health Support medics, and police.
Two minutes after police declared the scene safe to enter, the forward commander for Community Health Support entered the scene with the first few paramedics from New South Wales Ambulance. He radioed that it was safe for our team of 19 responders, about 500 meters (550 yards) away, to follow him in.
Here’s what we learned as we helped triage and treat survivors at the scene.
Terror attack injuries are different
Sadly, the events at Bondi confirmed what experts had recently begun to suggest. The pattern of injuries we see in terror........