First responders team up to practice active shooter drills in Ottawa County

GRAND HAVEN TWP. — Less than 12 hours after the latest deadly mass school shooting in the United States, local first responders re-enacted active shooter scenarios at Grand Haven High School.

Police officers, firefighters, paramedics and officers from the Coast Guard practiced a few scenarios in which high school students acted as injured victims. First responders divided into teams and rotated responsibilities, running down hallways, assessing victims — live actors and dummies — calling commands and communications over their radios, clearing rooms and corners and getting critically injured victims to safety.

“I think all of these people are leaving this situation tonight much better prepared for a real situation, just because they’ve done this a few different times,” said Ottawa County Director of Emergency Management Lou Hunt.

Grand Haven Township Fire/Rescue Chief Shawn Schrader emphasized the importance of not only first responders committing the drill to their muscle memories, but learning how to work together.

“We train for a lot of things we hope to never have to use,” Schrader said. “But the important thing is we train with the agencies that surround us so we have interoperability.”

As they entered the school, each participant was checked for weapons and labeled “unarmed,” so as not to cause any confusion between real and fake weapons used in the scenario. No real weapons were present Monday.

Just hours before, three adults and three children were killed at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee.

Each scenario started with the assumption that the school’s resource officer had the shooter barricaded in a classroom and they acted as the first responding agencies on the scene.

“However it occurred, we’ve got a whole bunch of injured, dying, dead individuals and we need to deal with that quickly because seconds matter,” Hunt said of training for mass casualty situations. “The vast majority of people who die in these incidents, they die from blood loss and that’s actually preventable if we can get them to definitive care really quickly.”

Sgt. William O’Donnell of Grand Valley State University, who led most of the training inside the high school, urged team leaders to take charge, call out commands and stick to prioritizing patient care. A couple of scenarios were organized to give those responders unique scenarios they might confront — a classroom with two entrances, a victim hiding in a room that’s not as visible as other victims, and responding to multiple rooms on two floors of the school.

Responders used materials available to them, like rolling chairs, as well as their own equipment to open doors, apply tourniquets to injured victims and more. Some officers held fake assault rifles and guarded corners of rooms and hallways.

Even in a practice scenario, many responders used their bedside manner to talk victims through evacuating, assess injuries and communicate to individuals taking cover.

“Make them feel safe, they’ll remember what you say to them,” O’Donnell said.

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“These things always start as chaos, there’s no way around it,” Hunt said. “What we’re trying to do is establish an organization to be quickly getting triage and treatment and transport to all of our victims … I think we’re in a good position in Ottawa County because of all the training and exercises we’ve been doing.”

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: First responders practice active shooter drills in Ottawa County