Emergency Agencies Train For The Unthinkable

Deputies from Wapello and Mahaska County search for an active shooter in the EBF High School on Wednesday. This was part of a large scale training exercise conducted by multiple agencies.

Eddyville, Iowa – Shots rang out around 9 am on Wednesday morning, as people ran fleeing from the building. Sheriff’s Deputies arrived on the scene to find many wounded and killed, and eventually, two shooters inside the building.

This scenario played out in a training exercise at the high school located in Eddyville, Iowa.

The exercise was an 8-month-long process that culminated with approximately 40 actors, and dozens of emergency personnel. Mahaska County Emergency Management Deputy Director Josh Stevens thanks the actors and participants for their involvement in helping to make the day’s exercise as real as possible.

Each role player’s job had been developed during the months leading up to the exercise. Varying levels of injury and interactivity were all part of the process. Some actors were unable to walk, while others would scream out in pain, in contrast to those who were uninjured. Those individuals would run from classrooms, creating a distraction and making officers choose if those individuals were one of the shooters.

“The purpose of an exercise is so we can evaluate what we have in place already so we can develop and improve our plan,” Stevens said of the “no fault exercise.”

A no fault exercise is built to determine if plans for such an event will work.

Exercises such as the one held on Wednesday allow not only law enforcement, but other emergency services, to come together in large and stressful situations. This helps to illuminate potential problems, ranging from equipment issues to communication problems.

The initial shots that rang out on Wednesday were from a .32 caliber pistol that was shooting blanks. Those first shots officially started the exercise that then cued reports to a 911 center.

The weapons used, by both the shooters and law enforcement, use what is called simunition. The weapons look real enough, because in some cases they are. Long rifles like AR’s are outfitted to fire the special ammunition, allowing law enforcement the ability to become more familiar with their equipment in a real-life scenario. The ammunition is a wax bullet that stings when it impacts a role player.

The role player’s simulated injuries helped emergency personnel beyond the visual for law enforcement. When an injured person was brought to the triage area, medical people would evaluate and treat those actors accordingly.

Those volunteer actors came from Job Corps and Indians Hills.

Individuals were medically triaged and coded with one of the following; red for critical, yellow for immediate, and walking wounded. This helps determine who would receive treatment and transport to hospitals and in what order.

Some patients were labeled black, which meant that they were deceased.

Ambulances from Ottumwa Regional Health Center and Mahaska Health Partnership were joined by Life Flight air ambulance in determining and transporting victims from the scene. One actor was flown by air ambulance to MHP as part of the exercise.

“One of our main goals was to keep it very realistic,” said Jamey Robinson, Mahaska County Emergency Management Coordinator.

For the actors who portrayed victims during the exercise, seeing and understanding the steps that are taken during such an event were eye opening. Actors were confused when law enforcement passed them up during the first part of the exercise.

For law enforcement, their job initially is not to treat, or help extricate, a victim from the scene, but instead to find the shooter and stop them from creating more victims.

Another experience for actors was being handcuffed by law enforcement. “A lot of you thought maybe you were going to evac the building right away, because you weren’t a shooter, and you weren’t injured, but law enforcement may have put you down on the ground and handcuffed you. You have to put yourselves in their shoes, because everything they see is a potential threat. They are making really quick decisions to try to decide what the best course of action is,” said Stevens.

Robinson said, imagine, as an officer, you are responding and people are running towards you? “That’s a good test for them [law enforcement] as well. That’s truly critical thinking on their part.”

Eddyville-Blakesburg-Fremont High School Principal said that “From a school perspective, this is very uneasy for us to see taking part in your hallways. We also know that if you don’t plan to succeed, you plan to fail.”

Noble said the exercise, “helped us diagnose what we can do to make sure in the unfortunate event something like this happens that we can be best prepared as possible.”

Wapello County Sheriff Mark Miller expressed that, from his observation, “I think we had as good a training as we possibly could today.”

“I really think this has been a success today,” added Miller, who says the agencies will sit down later to dissect the exercise “to see what we can do to improve it down the road.”

Mahaska County Sheriff Russell Van Renterghem says that the mindset on an active shooter situation got turned upside down from a law enforcement standpoint following Columbine. “It went very well today. We had controlled chaos.”

Van Renterghem said that, as law enforcement, they can see, “a big difference between 15-20 years ago and today.”

Robinson added, “Overall, I felt it went very well. There was great participation and everyone took their roles very seriously. We will continue to meet a couple more times to review and discuss the exercise. In the end, we hope to revise how we respond and to make sure we continue to work with agencies outside of our boarders.”

On scene was the Mahaska and Wapello County Sheriff’s Office, Poweshiek, ADLM, Wapello, and Mahaska County Emergency Management.

Also participating were Indian Hills, Job Corp, Life Flight Helicopter, Eddyville Fire Department, Ottumwa Regional and Mahaska Health Partnership ambulance services. Mahaska County 911 Communications and Mahaska County CERT also took part in the exercise.