When Dr. Avi Rivkind landed in Las Vegas three years ago to lecture as a trauma care expert, he saw something that troubled him.
The airport, McCarran International, felt too open, almost exposed.
He felt no less comfortable on the city’s Strip while watching crowds flow from hotels to casinos to shops to the street — with little security in sight.
“I felt there was a lack of presence, from the ease of getting around there, from the casinos, from how easy it is to enter all the malls,” he told JTA on Monday. “I felt very uncomfortable.”
Rivkind, who heads the Shock Trauma Unit at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, is a pioneer in treating victims of mass-casualty terror attacks. He gained his experience treating terror victims in Israel, and his techniques were used in 2013 to save the lives of some of the injured in the Boston Marathon bombing.
He came to Las Vegas in the summer of 2014 to speak at a Hadassah conference, but cut his trip short when Israel’s most recent war with Hamas broke out.
Before he left, however, Rivkind delivered a warning to a local TV channel: Get ready for a potential terror attack.
“With all the casinos and people are coming here from all over the world, I think you should take a huge situation,” Rivkind told Channel 8, the local CBS affiliate. “I don’t want to give anybody any ideas. However, you should be well prepared. In my mind, it’s a question of time.”
The doctor said he offered to advise local government officials on emergency preparedness but never heard back.
“It was clear, I don’t know why, that it was destined for calamity,” he told JTA.