Upshur holds mock disaster drill
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BUCKHANNON -- In an effort to prepare for potential emergencies, Upshur County Schools and local first responders participated in a community wide emergency event Saturday.
The emergency training event -- an active shooter drill -- was held at Buckhannon Academy Elementary School, where actors played the roles of students, teachers and staff.
The simulated emergency event began Saturday morning when the actor portraying the shooter walked into a classroom. Soon after, the "teacher" in the classroom called authorities.
In order to make the emergency exercise as realistic as possible, red liquid candy, to simulate blood, was placed on actors in the classroom who pretended to be injured in the fictitious incident. EMS workers rushed to those "wounded" and followed procedure as if they were real victims.
Officials from the school system also assumed their roles as if the event was real, monitoring and detailing the simulated emergency situation.
Buckhannon and Upshur County law enforcement, the Buckhannon Fire Department, Upshur EMS, the 911 Emergency Management Office and other emergency agencies responded to the mock disaster as they would have to a real incident. "This is a drill" and "This is a training exercise" were heard consistently over the scanner to prevent panic among the listening public as officers and agencies interacted with one another.
Buckhannon Police Chief Matt Gregory, explained that law enforcement's role in the drill was to provide the "initial response."
"We had a number of priorities from the get go," he said. "First and foremost was to locate the threat and to secure the school."
Gregory said having a full-scale mock disaster is "incredibly beneficial" as first responders and school officials had the opportunity to see the event play out.
"In those circumstances when things don't work out like you think they should work out ... When you actually test it in the real world, and again it's a controlled setting, so it allows you to discuss and fix it (so that) should a real world scenario occur you can respond efficiently," he said.
After participating in the mock disaster, Gregory said he thinks law enforcement needs to work more closely with the Upshur County Board of Education on the topic access to the schools.
"We have access, but it's limited," he said. "So we had to improvise in a couple of scenarios ... "
As far as communication with the other emergency agencies, Gregory said the collaboration was "very good."
"And that's a symbol of the very good working relationship that we have with fire, EMS and other law enforcement agencies," he said. "So we were able to coordinate as one team."
Though the agencies already have a good working relationship, Gregory said these scenarios are useful because "there's always room for improvement."
Mandy Tenney, a third-grade teacher at BAES, was an actor during Saturday's emergency training. She played the role of the teacher in the classroom where the mock incident began.
By being involved in the drill, Tenney said she learned a lot about what can occur during an emergency situation, adding the simulation is important for all parties involved.
"I think the more we practice, the more we have it ingrained in our instincts, and like (Saturday) I had the chance to look back and see what I could do differently with those situations and how I reacted and how to train my brain to react ... ," she said.
As a teacher, Tenney said her first thought in any given emergency is the safety of her students.
After the training event, those involved in the exercise gathered together for a first-impression discussion on the strengths and weaknesses highlighted during the simulation.
This is the first time the county has been able to simulate an emergency like the training event, said Jeff Harvey, preparedness division manager of JH Consulting.
"Previously it's all been planning meetings and table-top type of exercises, but this is the first one that we've done live, where everybody acted everything out in real time and had to interact," he said, adding the training event took about six months to organize.
Harvey acknowledged that not every emergency event will go as planned, but "you want people to get used to reacting to things and making decisions based on actually what is presented in front of them as opposed to hypothetical."
Harvey noted simulated events are important as they strengthen relationships in the community.
"It's a small town. We pretty much know who is going to be responding to some of these incidences, so if we can build that on the front end now, then we'll know these people and be able to work with them better whenever something actually does happen," he said.
Efforts to prepare for any kind of emergency will continue, Harvey said, and an after action meeting for the planning committee will be scheduled in the near future.
Harvey said Upshur County schools are trying to establish a cycle of holding these drills at each school once a year to provide training.