RNSH Doctor among first responders at Bondi shooting It was a Sunday evening, the first night of Hanukkah, and Zac Seidman and his family had just lit the first candle on the Menorah, the ritual central to the Jewish festival.
While moving through the treatment area, Zac spotted a young man he recognised from the Jewish community who had been shot while warning others about the shooter. Zac packed his wounds to stop the bleeding. “This is something I just never thought I would have to do,” he said. Working alongside a paramedic, he stabilised the young man until he was transferred for hospital treatment. Zac remained at the scene for several hours. Days later, Zac attended a RNSH debriefing. “It was quite useful for me to see and hear, and also very healing for me to be part of that meeting and to see how RNSH responded,” he said. He later heard that the young man had recovered from trauma surgery at another hospital. In the aftermath, he keeps returning to the symbolism of lighting candles over the eight days of Hanukkah, seeing in it a reflection of all the people who worked together to help at Bondi. “The miracle of people in that moment — they were all lights.”
Later, while his wife was putting their young son to bed, Zac, a medical registrar at Royal North Shore Hospital, received an alert on his phone. It came from Community Health Support (CHS), a free emergency medical advice and response service in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. Zac, born in Sydney, has volunteered with the organisation since inception, which was set up to serve both the Jewish and broader community when in medical need. The first CHS message read: “Critical incident. Bondi. Standby”. A second followed: “Mass casualty shooting.” Zac dressed quickly in his CHS uniform, grabbed his gear and left. Like many RNSH clinicians who would become part of the response, his night was about to change. He soon learned that a Hanukkah event had been targeted. When he arrived, he was struck not only by the scale of the disaster but by the number of familiar faces. People were lying on the ground, others were crying and terrified. Lifeguards brought surfboards to help move patients, while bystanders used their shirts to stem bleeding. Zac met his CHS colleagues and joined the triage effort, focusing on identifying who needed urgent care. “People became organised quite quickly,” he said. “It was organised chaos.” Severely injured patients were moved to a makeshift treatment area where NSW ambulance paramedics, CHS volunteers and lifesavers worked alongside many off-duty doctors, nurses and paramedics. Zac would later briefly connect with off-duty RNSH trauma nurse Ruby Hartley, who was also helping victims. “I feel pride that I was able to help where I could,” he said.
Dr Zac Seidman
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