He remembers the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles. He remembers the chaos. But most of all, he remembers the faces of the injured–so helpless and desperate for someone to come.

Junior Samuel “Sam” DiCarlo left his shift at the 4H Exhibit Hall on Aug. 13 in the hopes of attending the much-anticipated Sugarland concert. At the time, the idea of a stage collapsing and taking the lives of six never once crossed his mind.

But four hours later, after a gust of wind brought down everything, he and his twin brother Andrew Joseph “A.J.” survived through a night of soothing the living, saving the harmed and praying for the lost.

For a week after the calamity, his memory recollected the flickers of the evening when a stage hurled through the sky and fell upon a startled audience.

“It lingers in the back of my mind,” he said, his eyes focused on the carpet below. “Every time I see the screaming crowd on the news (and) every time I see the fallen stage in the paper, my mind goes back to the hours when I tried to save those injured people.”

Sam is not alone. According to the fourth edition of The Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders, 8 percent of Americans from the ages of 15 to 25 have experienced acute stress reaction, an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma.

Addressing the condition of his psyche since that night, Sam said he suffers from only a mild case of the disorder. But even he admits that at times, his mind replays the moments from that Saturday night.

Mark Bruns, an adult physician at IU Health, said some of the symptoms of acute stress disorder include anxiety, loss of sleep and constant reminders or flashbacks of the actual trauma that had occurred.

“It becomes more symptomatic,” he said, “when the condition begins to interfere with daily life, such as school or work. The condition may develop into Post-traumatic Stress Disorder if it continues for more than a month.”

A week before the accident, sophomore Rachel Krieger had begged her father to purchase tickets for the family after hearing that Sara Bareilles would open for Sugarland. At 7:30 p.m., two hours before the tragedy occurred, the Krieger family took its seats with hopes of a show that held surprises and twists along the way.

Two hours later, they got their wish.

Still unable to understand what went wrong, Krieger said, “I was there to hear music, not screams and thunder and crashing metal. But I did. And I’ll never forget what I heard.”

Surviving the Crash

As panicked Hoosiers fled the scene, the DiCarlo brothers ran in the opposite direction–toward the accident and the chaos. The two were separated for the next three hours.

Almost instinctively, Sam charged towards the stage. He saved a woman with a dislocated ankle and tried to soothe her as she whimpered from the pain; the bone had protruded from her skin. He aided another suffering from a head injury and facial lacerations, staying by her side until she was stable.

“As we tried to the save her, I was checking to make sure she was still there, that she was still alive,” he said.

Calm and collected throughout the night, the brothers represented a minority of the population. In her book The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes–And Why, author Amanda Ripley explains that many often surrender to panic during crises and, in effect, experience three stages of response: denial, deliberation and the decisive moment.

During the denial phase, people often find themselves unable to move quickly. The event has not registered in their minds, and reality blurs with fantasy out of shock.

Because the collapsed stage was so unexpected and so sudden, it sent Krieger into the denial phase.

“The shock. The desperation. Wondering what I could do,” she said. “I kept whispering to myself, ‘This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.’”

Minutes after the disaster, according to Kipley’s book, the deliberation phase will settle in with people realizing the devastation that has occurred and losing their sense of reason as well as the ability to take in their surroundings.

Sitting in bleachers that had towered the stage, Krieger said she saw the events pan out before her, like a movie she had never wished to see.

“No words could come to mind as I watched the horror ensue before me. Although I was in a position to see everything clearly, I still couldn’t register what was happening,” Krieger said.

And finally, according to Kipley’s book, in the decisive moment, many are sent into a state of paralysis and become incapable of reacting to the trauma.

The mixture of the crashing stage and the terrified shrieks from the crowd traumatized Krieger and hurled her into the final phase of response, she said.

“I sat there, paralyzed, as my mom, so terrified and shaken, threw her arm around us,” Krieger said. “My sister Lauren burst out sobbing, harder than I’ve ever heard her sob in my life. We were all cowering in fear.”

Krieger’s reaction was a typical one, and many had stood there paralyzed in the seconds following the crash. Yet the DiCarlo brothers took no time to analyze what had happened, for they were busy trying to salvage the aftermath.

“I guess God put us in that place for a reason,” Sam said. “All along, we were put there to pick up the pieces.”

Perhaps the reason the brothers were so quick to react dates back to two years ago when students Jordan Moss and Jordan Poirer had lost their lives after a police chase. The DiCarlo family was one of the first to hear the news and spent time in the hospital to offer comfort to the worried mothers and fathers.

Perhaps the previous trauma prepared them for ones to come. Perhaps that is the reason why while Krieger seems to remember only quick flashes of that night, time seems to have eased to a stop for Sam.

“When I see videos, everything happens so fast. But in that moment, every second passed so slowly,” Sam said. “There were officers everywhere, and everyone was yelling something different.”

According to a recent article from Forbes.com, the very act of surviving one crisis helps one survive another.  Even if the two incidents differ, a person can still respond more efficiently if he has experienced heavy amounts of panic in the past.

“(That night at the state fair) was a chance to help people,” Sam said. “Fear wasn’t running through my body. It just had to be done.”

Dealing with the Aftershock
Like the others who attended the Sugarland concert, Sam said he has struggled to go a day without reliving the horror of the fallen stage.

He said the evening news is a constant reminder of what he’s trying to move past. So is the daily newspaper.

“There’s no way to move past it yet,” he said. “Sometimes, it leaves my mind, only to be brought back by (news) coverage of the event.”

According to Bruns, two main treatments for acute stress disorder exist. One involves sharing thoughts of the anxiety with a professional, which is sometimes referred to as ‘talk therapy.’ Another method, which can be done at the same time as counseling, is with prescribed medication.

For Krieger, the support of her friends and family enables her to cope.

“It helps to be able to talk to my friends about it and write it down, just to get things straight in my head,” Krieger said. “Also, my family is always there for me whenever I need them.”

Weeks later, Sam said he expects to be reminded of the incident as only a hazy memory, as a time when he was able to lend a hand to those who needed it. He expects to be just as thankful that he left the scene unhurt and to grow stronger from it in case he is thrown into yet another disaster.

“In the end,” he said, “time will heal the wounds.”