Flametoad

So the exercise is over and I’m back in front of my computer. Here’s how it went down:

photo of EMS and crowd at campus shooter exercise

Apparently the scenario was that a girl broke up with her boyfriend, who then went ballistic. He shot her, then went into another room and shot a bunch of other people before killing himself. I heard two shots, but not the others. Some of the other volunteers said they heard several as the exercise leader simulated walking through the room shooting people. I’m a little disturbed by the fact that so many shots could be fired in the building but I only heard a pair. You’d like to think you’d have a certain amount of warning.

In this exercise, the volunteers did not simulate the actual shooting and our reactions. We were placed in our “final” positions as if we’d already reacted to the shooting. I can understand why. For safety reasons you wouldn’t want volunteers running around and possibly getting hurt for real. They did tag certain volunteers as having been indirectly hurt. One was “trampled”, one was “cut by glass”, etc.

As I said before, I was in a little office by myself. When I heard the shots I closed the door and took my position under the desk (as designated in my role). Afterward I talked to other volunteers who had asked someone if they should close the door and were told no. Duh! That’s the first thing you’d do. Anyway, it’s what I did. After waiting quite a while, a pair of SWAT dudes finally showed up to clear my office. One opened the door while the other stayed back in the hallway. The lead guy opened the door and swept the room. I could see his flashlight working across the carpet. His backup asked if anyone was in the room and he answered no. My desk was against the same wall as the doorway, so I couldn’t be seen unless he actually entered the room.

photo of police tape on campus

He did a second sweep, and that’s when he say my shoes sticking out from under the desk. He ordered me to put my hands where he could see them, and I shoved them out the front of the desk. He then ordered me to come out, and I started scooting out. As I was about halfway out, I reached back in for my bottle of water, and he again ordered me to keep my hands where I could see them. I came back out with the water, but I easily see how I could have been shot right then and there if he’d had an itchy trigger finger and a real gun.  It was an eye-opening experience, and probably a pretty accurate depiction of the kinds of things that would go on when actually clearing a building.

Speaking of which, the SWAT guys were both armed with AR-15 replicas. In this case they were one solid piece of rubber or plastic colored dark red. There’s no way you could mistake it for a real gun… except when you’re staring down the barrel like I was, it was still pretty intimidating! You can sorta see one in the photo of the guy with the neon security vest giving us our final briefing, but it’s a little hard to make out because he’s wearing a red shirt under the vest.

I was passed from the lead guy to his partner and from the partner to someone carrying a blue plastic replica pistol. From him I was directed halfway down the hall to yet another uniformed officer who led me all the way out of the building to the group of similarly uninjured “victims”, where we stood around, compared notes, and hammed it up for the tv cameras.

photo of fellow volunteers after the building was cleared

What’s interesting is that this exercise extended beyond just uniformed officers and paramedics. The next part of the exercise involved flooding all the local hosptials with “wounded”. Mrs. Flametoad works at one such hospital, and even though she knew I was going to be in the exercise she didn’t know that they were going to be part of it until the “patients” were on their way.

In conclusion, I’m still a proponent of concealed carrry as a way of protecting myself during an attack. HOWEVER, having stared down the wrong end of a replica AR-15, I’d want to make damn sure I was NOT still holding a firearm when the cavalry arrived.