The Lake County sheriff’s office led the largest simulated school shooting response exercise in the county’s history Friday morning, as campus and classroom shootings in the U.S continue at what has become a regular pace.
“We have to be able to respond,” Undersheriff Ray Rose said just before the simulation kicked off, predicting that “the question we have to ask ourselves is when, not if.”
Planning for the exercise took about a year, although it couldn’t have been more timely in the wake of last week’s fatal mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon and a shooting early Friday outside a dormitory at Northern Arizona University.
Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran said the need for such planning is obvious.
“We are charged with keeping people safe,” he said. “There have been five school shootings this school year already, and we’re only in the second month of school.”
Ground zero for the exercise was Newport Elementary School, located just off of Route 173 in unincorporated Newport Township near Wadsworth and Beach Park.
With students home for an institute day, some teachers portrayed themselves and others posed as students for the exercise, which included roughly 200 police, fire and rescue personnel responding to a 911 call reporting an active shooter at the school.
Starting with the seemingly unobtrusive entrance of the “shooter,” clad in a green T-shirt, through the front door of the elementary school, the simulation proceeded as closely as possible to real time, officials said.
Responding vehicles came at intervals designed to be realistic for the school’s location, beginning with a few sheriff’s squad cars before a much larger contingent arrived, including special weapons teams, ambulances and a U.S. Homeland Security command post trailer.
Even with everyone present aware that it was a drill, the spectacle still seemed eerily real.
“It was a little freaky. It’s disconcerting,” said Nancy Wagner, superintendent of the Beach Park School District, which includes Newport Elementary School. Wagner helped plan the exercise and was one of many representatives of districts across the county on hand to witness the event in an attempt to glean important information to help with school planning. Meanwhile, law enforcement evaluators studied the exercise to rate the response and identify areas that may need improvement.
“I was very impressed with how it went and with the dialogue we had afterward about what we have to improve,” Rose said.
Officials said it would take about two weeks to fully evaluate the results of the exercise, in which, by the script, 75 students and teachers were rescued, seven were injured and four people were killed, including the shooter. As heavily armed officers responded and secured the school, cries for help could be heard throughout the halls, and the injured and dead were located throughout the school. Once the halls were made safe, students, teachers and the injured were evacuated.
In a final chapter, a remote-controlled robot located a bomb in the car the shooter had arrived in, and that threat also was defused.
Responders participating were not told the specific details of the simulated incident ahead of time and will be evaluated on their response under those conditions, officials said.
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Curran said his office has worked with schools throughout the county to conduct a similar, smaller-scale exercise each year, but Friday’s simulation was by far the largest and most comprehensive.
The sheriff’s office’s school safety team led the exercise, but also involved were the Lake County Homeland Security Unit, Lake County Emergency Management, the Newport Fire Department, the Beach Park School District, and some additional police and fire departments from the area.
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