SRINAGAR: A thunderclap of fireplace, concrete, and smoke tore by Nowgam police station in Srinagar’s upscale Sheikhpora neighborhood near 11.30pm on Nov 14. Whereas sirens lagged behind, a hospital guard and a cook dinner have been already on the transfer.Ulfat Dar, a younger guard at Ujala Cygnus Hospital almost a km away, noticed the orange flare crest the skyline after the explosion. He thought it was a cylinder blast. He nonetheless ran. “Drive,” he advised Waseem, a hospital cook dinner. They swung an ambulance in direction of the station.“They have been among the many first to succeed in,” Ujala Cygnus supervisor Dr Parvez Sofi mentioned Tuesday. Of their first sprint they hauled eight wounded policemen out of particles and flame. Extra adopted in two further runs. On the final, they pried free a trapped officer whose legs have been pinned below a slab. He lived.Sofi rushed from his Hyderpora house, 10km away. When he arrived, Ulfat and Waseem had already crowded the emergency ground with casualties. “Blood in every single place. Screams,” he mentioned. He triggered inner WhatsApp alerts. CT technicians, trauma groups, emergency physicians — everybody surged in.Medical doctors handled lacerations, fractures, splinter wounds, and a number of head traumas. One officer arrived with huge mind bleed. 4 went to ICU. Others have been stabilized. Psychologists and psychiatrists have been later pressed into service as a number of officers sat mute for hours, some struggling ear accidents from strain waves.Senior officers visited and provided backup beds in authorities hospitals. “We advised them we may deal with it,” Sofi mentioned. By daybreak, the depend stood at 23 sufferers. Most are anticipated to be discharged in coming days.Sofi has labored mass-casualty wards earlier than — he recollects 2008 at Govt Bone and Joint Hospital in Srinagar — however mentioned nothing equaled the power of Friday evening. “I am used to trauma,” he mentioned. “This was horrifying.”Ujala Cygnus has stepped into crises earlier than. In April, when a CRPF bus skidded close to Doodhpathri in Budgam, the hospital obtained each injured trooper and referred none. On Tuesday, J&Ok CM Omar Abdullah stopped by to satisfy the wounded policemen.What Sofi remembers most this time will not be the rubble, or the blood, or the screams. It is the scene that got here earlier than all that: a guard and a cook dinner steering an ambulance straight in direction of a blast.