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Active shooter exercise pushes responders, resources to limit
Less than 30 seconds after local police entered the gym, it was all over.
Taking part in an active shooter response full-scale exercise, four local officers worked quickly, efficiently in taking out the two “suspects.” Two officers were shot but the wounds likely would not have been fatal.
But for as quickly as officers worked on this front, the work was only beginning.
Dozens of emergency personnel from throughout the county, not to mention Greencastle School Corporation officials, were about to be called into action.
It was all over, but it was only beginning.
For the much of the rest of the morning, the exercise went on. The four police officers — Officers Zach Rhine and Brad Hiatt of the Greencastle Police Department and Putnam County Sheriff’s Deputies Anthony Brown and Jeffery Freeman — then had to search Greencastle Middle School for an further threats. None were located.
However, there were victims. Ten fatalities included seven students, one staff member and the two suspects. Another 21 injuries — some of them critical — meant a response from local emergency medical and fire officials.
Three medical helicopters were also called to the scene, actually landing on the football field behind the middle school.
Upon arrival at the school, officers also located a possible hazardous materials threat. Firefighters responded to this threat while also helping get victims out of the building.
A decontamination site was also set up for those injured or made ill by the material spill.
Next door at McAnally Center, Greencastle administrators, staff members and teachers soon organized into a response team to greet parents arriving asking where their students were and if they were OK.
Some got good news, while others were left with only questions about students who had not yet been located ... or worse.
Across Veterans Memorial Highway at the Ivy Tech campus, a public information team representing the sheriff’s department, Indiana State Police and the Putnam County Emergency Management Agency assembled to deal with the onslaught of inquries from the media and public.
Behind the scenes, both on campus at Command Vehicle 7 and across town at the 911 Dispatch Center, another team coordinated the activities of dozens of responders.
If it sounds complicated, that was part of the point on Saturday. While no one wants to believe that a mass shooting situation can happen right here in Greencastle or Putnam County, events across the nation continue to suggest otherwise.
The idea behind such exercises is to test the response of local agencies, revealing points of strength and weakness in what is ultimately a consequence-free environment.
The idea is to make the response sharper, more focused should a real emergency of this scale arise.
Once the exercise itself was over, the involved parties gathered to discuss what had been learned in the course of the morning.
“For the situation we had, I think we did a great job,” Greencastle Fire Chief John Burgess said. “We did find some spots we can improve on, but we’ll address those.”
Others echoed these sentiments.
“Overall, we were pleased with the officers’ ability to do their job and take care of the bad guys,” Greencastle Police Chief Tom Sutherlin said. “When it does happen, we need to be ready.”
Sutherlin spoke rather emotionally about discussion he hears in the public that such training is not needed, pointing out that this has been said in countless other communities where tragedy struck.
Cloverdale Principal Sonny Stoltz, an evaluator on Saturday, praised the efforts of Greencastle Schools in taking part.
“Spread the word: Greencastle Community Schools is doing training to try and make schools safer,” Stoltz said.
For all its complexity, Saturday’s exercise was just a glimpse of the time and effort that have gone into the event. For more than a year, a team of 22 people has been planning the full-scale exercise. And this doesn’t take into account the three-year cycle on which these occur, which includes a tabletop exercise in year one, a functional exercise in year two, culminating with a full-scale response in the third year.
Organizers also praised evaluators who gave of their time to assess the response of various agencies, as well as more than 60 actors who made the suspects, victims and parents as real as they possibly could be.
It’s a lot of effort put into something that may never come to be.
Just don’t consider it wasted effort.
“Hopefully it’ll never happen here,” EMA Director Tom Helmer said, “but we’ll be ready if it does.”