Pinellas County officials hold mass casualty exercise at middle and high school
LARGO, Fla. - It was the closest thing to a mass casualty event without the tragedy.
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and agencies from across the county held an active assailant mass casualty exercise on Thursday at Seminole High School and Middle school.
"It's not a question of if this is going to happen again," Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said. "It is going to happen again. The question is when and where. We hope it's not here, but we need to be as prepared as we possibly can," he added.
Sheriff Gualtieri said 300 people were involved in the exercise, including law enforcement, fire, EMS and actors, many who are Seminole students, teachers and administrators.
"It felt real. You hear the gunshots going off. You see the people going down. You see the casualties, there was, you know, fake blood, there's fake wounds," Gualtieri explained.
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Seminole Middle School was an insurance company for the exercise that the shooter had been fired from and where he started his rampage with an AR-15. He then made his way into Seminole High School, the school he recently attended. Two school resource officers took him down.
Sheriff Gualtieri says exercises are important because active assailant situations are inevitable.
"It’s not if this will happen, but when, and we don't want it to happen in our schools. And it's important for our parents to know that we are prepared. We are making them as safe as we possibly can," Pinellas County Schools Superintendent Kevin Hendrick said.
Pinellas County Schools also ran an offsite reunification center.
Hendrick said the exercise gives teachers, administrators and students a chance to prepare for the worst too.
"We work hard on the front end to make sure that any of these situations, we prepare everybody for them. There's a lot of mental health and wellness checks that go into getting ready for this day. But as we think about an actual event, all of the supports that are needed, and so it's school staff, but it's also a county health department as well, helping us with that," Hendrick said.
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"We hope that none of these scenes ever play out in our schools, but we have to practice. And so here we are in the summer where we train and get better. And this is why we're doing the second consecutive summer. We've gone through one of these exercises, different scenarios," Hendrick explained.
300 people were involved in the exercise.
Sheriff Gualtieri, the chairman of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission, said they made the exercise more challenging this year, adding a second scene and a second shooter. First responders also didn’t know the details, only that it was an exercise.
"I think we made progress from last year. I could see some areas certainly today where there's room for improvement, but overall, I'm very happy with how it went. And one of the things that I’m happiest about is the exercise itself, because it exposes people to it and lets you see what we can do and test ourselves," Sheriff Gualtieri said.
Gualtieri said he tells his deputies to run towards the gunfire and not to stop until they kill the shooter.
"Our initial responsibility is not to treat anybody. And that's one of the things that's hard to get instilled in the mind of the cops because they want to save people. They want to help. That's not their job. That's the fire EMS job. Their job is to stop the killing," Gualtieri said.
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"And you've got to walk past people. You've got to step over victims. You got to go past them because nobody can do their job and nobody can save these people or help save these people or try to until the shooting stops," he said.
The exercise was held at Seminole High School and Middle school.
Sheriff Gualtieri said he was happy to see the formation of rescue task forces, which is a combination of fire, EMS and law enforcement, go into the scenes together, an improvement from last year.
He said there’s room for improvement where they set up the "casualty collection point." Gualtieri said it was too close to "what we call the hot zone."
"Those are some inside baseball things," he said.
"It's about testing the limits and trying to push the limits so that we can deal with it, again, if it does happen here, and we're best prepared," Gualtieri said.
Sheriff Gualtieri said they’ll go through all of the video from the exercise, debrief and release a detailed report about things that went well and what needs improvement.
In the future, he said he wants to incorporate the hospitals, and also possibly do another exercise at a location other than a school.