ORLANDO – On Monday morning, residents here drove to work, visitors readied for a day at the theme parks and, by most measures, it seemed like any another June morning -- except for the uneasy knowledge that Orlando now joins the uncomfortable ranks of Paris, New York, Madrid and other cities that have withstood massive terrorist attacks.
How residents rebound from the worst mass shooting in U.S. history and whether the incident alters the most visited city in the USA remain lingering questions.
As investigators pieced together the horror that unfolded early Sunday morning at Pulse, a crowded gay nightclub, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer strove to reset the tone of a city usually known for its perky mouse.
“We will not be defined by the act of a cowardly hater,” Dyer
said Monday. “We’ll be defined by how we respond, how we treat each other. This community has already stepped up to do that.”
But for many people here, the revolting scene left by gunman Omar Mateen, 29, at Pulse will be impossible to set aside.
Orlando Police officers and Orange County Sheriff’s deputies responded to the initial call of shots fired at Pulse around 2 a.m. Sunday. A three-hour standoff with police ended in a shootout with Mateen, 29, who was killed. The shooting left 49 people dead and 54 injured.
Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said a top priority for him Monday was monitoring the deputies involved in the incident.
“Many of them saw carnage they would never ever see in any location,” he said. “This is not a war zone that we’re living in. This is civilized society and we had to deal with something unthinkable.”
Authorities dispatched teams of victim advocates across the city to help survivors and families of the victims cope with the stress of the shooting. Orange County public schools are on summer break, but officials sent counselors to area summer schools, which start tomorrow, and beefed up security at events, district spokeswoman Shari Bobinski said.
Also vulnerable is the city’s vaunted tourist industry. Last year, Orlando welcomed a record-breaking 66 million visitors – more than any other city in the USA – and Orange County generated $230 million in tourist development tax collections, also a record. Across the city on Monday, Orlando’s famed theme parks opened for business as usual.
Across the street from Universal Studios Florida, Toni Sapp, 47, of Kentucky, and her family sipped on Starbucks drinks and readied for the first of three days at the theme park. They arrived Sunday night, just as news of the shooting spread across the world.
“We’re not as happy as we were coming here,” Sapp said. “Everyone’s in shock right now.”
Her son, Joshua Moore, 26, said the incident won’t alter their plans or deter them from returning someday. “After we accept and realize what happened, it’ll just be another part of American history,” he said. “I don’t see Florida becoming this terrible place where this terrible thing happened.”
The fact that the shooter chose a gay club points to the specifity of his intended terrorism and could have less of an overall impact on the city than if he'd had targeted a more tourist-centric site, such as a theme park, said Jerrold Post, a George Washington University psychiatry professor and author of The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to al-Qaeda.
Different populations deal differently with terrorist acts. Israelis make it a point to return to the cafes hours after an explosion occurs there and the blood and broken glass are swept away, he said. New Yorkers returned to work and held Broadway plays days after the 9/11 attacks and Parisian cafes were busy again the day after last year’s attacks there.
“The goal is to cause terror and intimate,” Post said. “A counter strategy is to be back to normal as quickly as possible.”
A few blocks from Pulse, the nightclub where the shooting occurred,residents milled around, sharing information and occasionally hugging one another for support.
Chris Enzo, a friend of a bartender at the club, said his friend saw Mateen enter the club and heard the sounds of bullets, screaming and breaking glass. The woman he was serving at the time was killed and he was shot three times – twice in the back and once in the elbow – but was recovering at a nearby hospital.
Enzo said he’s helping to organize an electronic-dance music event at a local nightclub later in the week, specifically for friends he knows are afraid to leave their homes.
“Our message is to get people out there and let people know: We are not going to succumb to terrorist attacks,” he said. “We are not going to let Orlando live in fear of terror.”
