As a sunny October Monday dawned on the Las Vegas Strip, unfinished food, abandoned clothing, dropped lipstick and cell phones lay scattered across a festival grounds where thousands of people had fled in a panic the night before.

But worse, there were still bodies and blood there when Gov. Brian Sandoval visited the grounds, where what was supposed to be a festive country music concert turned into the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Fifty-nine people died.

“I hope I never have to see something like that again,” Sandoval said in an interview at his office. “It’s just an unimaginable tragedy that you never believe could happen here in Las Vegas.”

The Republican governor said he didn’t sleep Sunday night as he watched the tragedy unfold on television and the death toll rise in the wee hours of the morning. He took a 6:30 a.m. flight down to Las Vegas and fielded an early call from President Donald Trump, who plans to visit on Wednesday.

“He was very sorry that this has happened,” Sandoval said of their call. “I appreciate the fact that he reached out very early on and he was very compassionate and very concerned.”

First on Sandoval’s agenda was a stop to see victims and their loved ones at the hospitals where the 527 injured were taken. Officials at University Medical Center and Sunrise Hospital told him their hallways, at one point, were covered with blood.

“I’ve talked to mothers and fathers and victims and grandfathers,” Sandoval said. “Put yourself in somebody’s shoes where there’s a 24-year-old son laying with his eyes closed with tubes in his body, unconscious, who’s a gunshot victim. His fiancé was sitting at his bedside, she’s pregnant. I mean, what’s going through her mind right now?”

He was briefed by the sheriff and later signed two executive orders — one meant to waive barriers for out-of-state health-care professionals trying to help in Las Vegas, and another to speed the flow of state resources to Clark County. Then he met with officials from MGM Resorts, which owns the Mandalay Bay where the shooter perched and the festival grounds where his gunfire rained down.

He hoped to donate blood himself in the afternoon before he flew back to Carson City, but staff said he wasn’t able to because of his overseas travel. He’s expected to return on Wednesday.

Getting better

Sandoval chairs the Nevada Commission on Homeland Security, a group that includes police, the FBI and others and often prepares for and discusses the possibility of catastrophe descending on the Las Vegas Strip.

“That’s why the hospitals and others responded as well as they did — because they practiced this,” he said. “They practice for the worst case scenario. But this was the worst, worst case scenario.”

Outdoor concerts aren’t unique, he noted, and such a shooting could have happened anywhere. He called the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department the best in the country and said they responded in “an amazing way” that should inspire confidence among tourists.

But he said investigators are looking through video to piece together what could be improved.

“I think that once that occurs, then there can be an informed response on what needs to change. Certainly things do need to change. There’s no doubt about that,” he said. “As time goes on we’ll figure this out and Las Vegas will be better, it will be stronger and it will be safer.”

In the meantime, he said he’s focused on the victims. Like a young woman he met who told him she drove to Las Vegas for the festival but didn’t know how she would get back because of her gunshot wound.

And the young man he met who was shot in the shoulder but was still smiling and talking about how lucky he felt to be alive.

“My heart’s broken to see that happening. But at the same time, you see the best of humanity and how people have responded and how the community has come together,” he said. “As time goes on, we’ll figure this out — we’ll find out why this coward did what he did. I’m just so angry and so sad at the same time. But in any event, Las Vegas will be stronger.”

Disclosure: MGM Resorts International has donated to The Nevada Independent. You can see a full list of donors here.