THE DAY AFTER : Eerie Silence Shrouds the Tension at Fairview

Gwen Newman faced a grisly task when she reported to work at the Fairview Developmental Center on Wednesday just after sunup. Newman, a cleaning supervisor at the state hospital, was one of six employees assigned to mop up the blood in the aftermath of a shooting rampage that left one dead and two wounded.

“They called me last night and said they needed to have some work done early in the offices,” Newman said Wednesday. “We went over there, we checked it out and we got busy.”

Just as Newman and her crew scrubbed the floors and walls to remove any visible remnants of Tuesday’s tragedy, hospital staff and patients at Fairview began the more difficult process of putting the emotional trauma behind them.

A team of psychiatrists and state mental health administrators began arriving from Sacramento on Wednesday to provide counseling for those hospital employees who are having trouble coping with feelings of anxiety. California Department of Mental Health employees who specialize in responding to disasters spent the day comforting hospital staff members and alerting them to the possibility that they could suffer emotional side effects.

As employees struggled to engross themselves in their daily activities, an eerie silence enveloped the 513-acre hospital campus. “It’s never this quiet, it’s like a graveyard around here today,” said Leroy Benton, 50, an audit technician. “We’re still in a state of shock.”

Across the grounds, a standing-room-only crowd of about 500 people packed the hospital auditorium to hear trauma experts outline ways to help them deal with the tragedy. Meanwhile, hospital officials recapped Tuesday’s events to quell rumor and speculation that there had been multiple assailants and that shotguns had been used in the attack.

According to police and witness accounts, Michael E. Rahming, a 37-year-old black employee who often complained of on-the-job racism, shot one of his supervisors to death and wounded two others. Rahming, a painter, allegedly opened fire on two of his supervisors with a .32-caliber handgun at the paint shop, then drove half a mile to the administration building where he wounded the hospital’s top administrator.

Some employees who attended the meeting Wednesday pushed disabled patients in wheelchairs. Others embraced quietly, huddled together in small groups. Several traded speculation about the mind-boggling events the day before, exhaling deeply on their cigarettes.

“I guess it helps because there are so many rumors going around,” said one woman who asked not to be identified. “But no one will ever know what really happened. What set him off.”

Tensions were running high throughout the hospital. A security guard was posted at the entrance to the administration building where one of the shootings had occurred. Meanwhile, edgy hospital employees stopped strangers to ask where they were going.

“I’ve been here 13 years,” Benton said. “Now all of a sudden when I walk into one of these client residences, they say: ‘Can I help you?’ ”

Benton and two fellow employees had clustered together in a parking lot, oblivious to the light drizzle that had begun to form puddles in the asphalt.

“I just saw him (the suspect) last week and he said everything was all right,” Benton said. “He stayed to himself. To me, he was just a loner who did his work.”

At the paint shop where Rahming allegedly shot two people, a bewildered Ken Hawkins sat alone in a back office reading newspaper accounts of the shooting spree. Three of the six paint shop employees had called in sick Wednesday, said Hawkins, who was one of the suspect’s supervisors.

“A lot of them are just sick over it,” said Hawkins, who was apparently one of the gunman’s intended victims, according to police. His face flushed as he pointed to a rectangular table surrounded by seven empty chairs where one of the victims was shot. In the background, a large poster of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana hung above a row of lockers.

Another distraught co-worker declined to discuss the incident, saying only, “My head is just kind of scrambled right now.”

While many employees tried to resume their daily responsibilities, work in many departments came to a virtual standstill.

Warren Hendon, a maintenance technician who is often deluged with telephone calls to his beeper, said things have been unusually quiet. “But no one’s calling today,” he said. “I haven’t even gotten up from this chair.”

Meanwhile, a support group for parents who have children at Fairview pledged continued support for the hospital.

“I spoke to some parents yesterday and today and not one professed concern for the security of their child,” said Matthew J. Guglielmo, president of Fairview Families and Friends. “It’s a sad thing that this happened but it’s like a shooting on a freeway.”

Dr. Steven Shon, the assistant director of the state Department of Mental Health, told employees that they would be offered support groups.

Times correspondent Ted Johnson contributed to this report.