The shootings at Fort Hood in Texas severely taxed local hospitals as they struggled to cope with the flood of victims, and left them scrambling for blood donations as the casualties came into their emergency rooms.

Victims were sent as far away as Scott & White Memorial Hospital in Temple, about 30 miles away, since it is one of only trauma centres in central Texas capable of handling the most serious injuries. The hospital reported receiving 10 shooting victims from Fort Hood, and called for blood donations. They received a huge response.

While most of the victims were believed to have been military personnel, one of the dead was a civilian police officer, Fort Hood confirmed.

Peggy McCarty reported that her daughter, Specialist Keara Bono, 21, of the Army Reserve, called her from a hospital and said she had been shot in the back, according to CNN. She had arrived at Fort Hood a day earlier and was scheduled to deploy to Iraq on December 7.

Bono, who attended high school in Olathe, Kansas, lives in Minnesota with her husband, according to the Kansas City Star. McCarty said Bono was on the phone with her husband during the shooting and he heard shots and shouting before the line went dead.

Lisa Pfund of Random Lake, Wisconsin, said that her daughter, 19-year-old Amber Bahr, was shot in the stomach at Fort Hood but was in stable condition. “We know nothing, just that she was shot in the belly,” Pfund said.

A hospital a short distance from the base, Metroplex Adventist Hospital in Killeen, received seven of the victims from the Fort Hood shootings. A press release said one of the victims had been under distress on the way to the hospital and was later pronounced dead. All the victims being treated at the hospital were with the military, the release said.