When the first calls of shots fired at Trolley Square came in on Feb. 12, Salt Lake City Fire Department's Station 4 didn't wait to be dispatched.

Hearing "multiple fatalities, multiple injuries" over their station's speaker system, the "Fours" were out the door.

One of the first companies on the scene, the Fours entered through the mall's north entrance.

Believing a second shooter was still on the loose, Salt Lake City police officers escorted the firefighters inside the mall, their handguns drawn.

Conrad Fivas, Russell Whitney, David Prisbrey and Station 4 Capt. Jerry Gomez are trained to rush into burning buildings - not shooting scenes, where they could be in a gunman's line of fire.

The firefighters began quickly assessing the victims. In the card shop Cabin Fever, lying face down in a mess of shattered glass, was 53-year-old Stacy Hanson.

"He was kind of glazed over and really quiet - probably the shock of it," Fivas said. The firefighters only recall Hanson speaking once: "Please, help me," he said.

The men could see he was badly injured. Shotgun pellets had pierced his lower back, near his spine.

Time was of the essence.

Fivas, the largest of the four firefighters, is the go-to guy in his company when brute strength is required.

He has unscrewed balky tops off fire hydrants and lifted large people onto stretchers, his colleagues said.

In Trolley Square, he reached down, scooped up Hanson and put him on a stretcher.

"We basically threw him on there as fast as we could," he said.

As Whitney and the other firefighters checked Hanson's breathing and bandaged his "bleeders," Fivas consoled him, "trying to give him some support and hope." He recalls telling Hanson, "Hey, you're going to be OK."

Despite the possibility that he was in danger himself, Fivas found his own safety was far from his mind.

"When you see someone who is really hurt, you focus in on them," he said. "And you don't think about the other things.

Your concern is getting them in and helping them as fast as you can."

Whitney and Prisbrey rode in an ambulance with Hanson to University Hospital. A.J. Walker, 16, was with them, upright and talkative - a fact that would later amaze the firefighters, in light of Walker's serious brain injuries caused by pellets lodged in his head.

Gomez and Fivas, meanwhile, went back inside, where another company was preparing to load 44-year-old survivor Carolyn Tuft into an ambulance.

"It was a sad deal," Fivas said. "I saw a lot of children coming out, fear on their faces."

It was a scene these firefighters won't soon forget.

"I remember thinking to myself, 'I'm going to retire after 20 years because I don't want to see this . . . my whole life," Gomez said. "It was probably the worst scene a lot of us had ever seen."

Two months later, Whitney and Prisbrey welcomed Hanson home on Tuesday.

They blended into the background of the many other police officers and community volunteers who looked on as Hanson sat in his wheelchair, smiling, soaking in a perfect spring day.

lrosetta@sltrib.com