Noah Johnson Daily Press: Gladstone Safety Officer Mallory Nelsen and Detective/Sergeant Aaron Quinlan load their airsoft guns before entering Gladstone High School as part of a school shooting drill.
GLADSTONE – After completing a school shooting drill, local authorities are meeting again.
After completing a school shooting drill on Tuesday, officials in Gladstone met to discuss how the drill went. Participants, first responders, teachers and staff reviewed the scenario and discussed what worked well and what could be improved.
“Today we had school staff and pretty much all of our first responders represented. I think with any drill you learn, the goal is to find out where your deficiencies might be. We found some of those and we’re going to train and do more of these drills to improve our response, but it was a great drill. And I think there’s some great feedback from it.” said Paul Geyer, Delta County emergency management coordinator.
A sticking point was the realization that the 911 emergency call center could receive and respond to text messages, something that not all school staff were aware of.
This means that teachers and other staff can communicate more quietly with the emergency room in the event of a mass casualty incident.
Officials from the dispatch center attended the meeting and said they were encouraged to continue calling 911 regardless of whether someone had already contacted them.
“They (the operations center) mentioned on Tuesday that no call is insignificant and there is no need to worry about overloading the emergency call system,” said Geyer.
Jen Peterson, director of Delta County’s operations center, said her team was aware of the exercise and was able to inform them calmly.
“All the screaming and fear that we would normally experience on a call like this wasn’t there. So it was a little different, but you know, from the dispatch center perspective. Basically, we take that initial information and then, based on what we hear from our callers, we coordinate an appropriate response to what we’re being told.” said Peterson.
She added that her team has built a good working relationship with schools in the area and teachers understand why the dispatch center is asking the questions it is asking.
“We have a really good working relationship with the schools in our area, which I think would help us if we were ever unlucky enough to have to host such an event,” said Peterson.
“We have worked together for so long that I think our dispatchers would achieve a level of cooperation that might not be possible in another area if the school staff there did not know in advance what was being asked and why.”
Another key issue was improving communication between all authorities and the school.
“Communication is always a big deal,” said Rob Robinson, Gladstone Public Safety Director.
“It’s not that the communication was terrible, but when you have so many different places at work and you’re trying to relay information and things like that, there are always going to be communication breakdowns.”
Robinson added that communication needs to be continually improved throughout his career.
Robinson also stressed the importance of working as a unit rather than as independent agencies.
“We have to work together as a team,” he said.
He said this included law enforcement, school personnel, state police and more.
Geyer repeated Robinson’s statement: “I think the key, however, is to recognize that this is a nationwide response that involves agencies across the country that need to work together and practice to ensure that an incident like this runs as smoothly and safely as possible.”
Overall, Geyer and Robinson described the exercise as a success.
“It was very impressive and I am very happy about it,” said Robinson.
He added that this exercise is just the beginning, as the county intends to conduct such an exercise annually to stay prepared.
“I would say we have made a good first step here and now we train at a different venue every year and continue to train as a big team rather than individual units. That is crucial and we are on the right track,” Robinson said.
“We’re going to keep the ball rolling, we’re going to start plugging the holes we see and make our plan a little bit better each time.”
