Residents of Orlando, Fla. are still reeling from the shootings on June 12 at Pulse Nightclub just south of downtown Orlando that took the lives of 49 people, while wounding 53 others.
“I thought ‘What is happening to my city? This is a nightmare,’” Victor Tan, a student at the University of Central Florida and Orlando native said when he first learned of the shootings. “It’s horrific to think that something this tragic could happen in a place I call home.”
Tan was not sure how the city would react and what would happen next.
“I was scared to be honest,” Tan said. “With this, the shooting of Christina Grimme two nights before, and then the gator attack on the little boy over at [Walt] Disney [World], I was just waiting for the next tragedy to take place.”
However, instead of hiding or wallowing in sadness, “the city beautiful” came together with outpouring of support from those in the Orlando community. A vigil was held in downtown Orlando on June 19, with an estimated 50,000 people surrounding Lake Eola in support. Other vigils were held throughout the Orlando area in remembrance of those who lost their lives. A concert, titled “All Is One: Orlando Unity Concert,” was held on June 22 by artists Nate Reuss and Imagine Dragons at Hard Rock Live in Orlando, with all proceeds benefitting the victims and their families.
What may have been the most emotional event in support of the victims, according to resident Carl-Max Millionard, was the ceremony held prior to Orlando City soccer game on June 18, the first major event in Orlando after the tragedy. Millionard, a student at the University of Central Florida and Orlando native, attended the match and said he never experienced an event as emotional as this game.
“It was weird. It was eerie even,” Millionard said. “I’ve attended dozens of Orlando City games, but this was like no other. That game was more than a game. It was a community coming together.”
Over 37,000 fans attended the match between Orlando City and Kansas City. The club left open 49 seats, each tied with a balloon, to remember the 49 lost lives. Players and fans donned purple t-shirts with #OrlandoUnited emblazed in rainbow colors across the chest.
“The people in this city have never let us down when we’ve needed them and maybe they need us a little bit right now,” Adrian Heath, former head coach of Orlando City said in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel.
Luke D’Mello, a cast member at Walt Disney World, said it was tough to see his fellow cast members the next day at work after it was announced that cast member Jerry Wright, who D’Mello worked with at the Emporium Shop on Main Street at Magic Kingdom, was named to the list of victims.
“I had friends break down and cry while at work,” D’Mello said. “It was hard to focus. And the vigil at Magic Kingdom was the most emotional experience of my life.”
Although Disney did not formally have an itinerary for a vigil, park attendees on June 18 gathered around the statue of Walt Disney in front of Cinderella Castle for a moment of silence following the park’s “Kiss Goodnight,” the announcement that the park is closed. The thousands of people in attendance created a rainbow heart out of glow sticks.
On August 25, Orlando Health announced that they would not be billing the patients who were victims of the Pulse Nightclub shootings.
The healthcare network said in a statement to ABC News that “Orlando Health has not sent any hospital or medical bills directly to Pulse patients, and we don’t intend to pursue reimbursement of medical costs from them.”
As for the nightclub itself, Pulse is much different than it was prior to the morning of June 12. Flowers and banners surround the once-popular gay nightclub turned memorial site. People stroll the walkway that surrounds the club, shuttered and boarded up. Candles are lit daily, and the names of all 49 who died are etched for mourners to remember.
Mayor Buddy Dyer, in an interview with 90.7 WMFE earlier in August, hopes that the city will purchase the site and turn it into a permanent memorial.
“I think we need to determine some period of time that we leave it exactly as is with some adequate fencing,” Dyer said in the radio interview, “because there will be people that want to travel here to see it as it exists.”
The city of Orlando has changed drastically since June 12, but not in the way Tan expected.
“You hate to see it happen because of a tragedy, but this city has unified like I’ve never seen before,” Tan said. “Everywhere you go, you see rainbow flags, flowers, memorials and other remembrances. People have gone out of their way to help others. I’ve seen people handing out flowers with notes that say ‘You’re loved.’ It’s great to see what people can do in times of tragedy, and it makes me proud to be from Orlando.”
