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Preparing for the worst
Iowa County emergency workers practice for school shooting emergency
Southeast Iowa Union offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
MARENGO — An alarm echoed through the halls of Iowa Valley Elementary School, and a disembodied voice calmly instructed students and staff to evacuate the building.
But the students and staff were already gone, and the emergency was not real.
Students and staff left the building before law enforcement and emergency personnel began an active shooter drill Friday.
“Try to take this as seriously as you can,” Iowa County Emergency Management Coordinator Josh Humphrey told police, sheriff’s deputies, firefighters, paramedics and ambulance crews at the Marengo Fire Station staging area.
“There’ll be some curve balls thrown at you throughout the day,” said Humphrey. It was all geared to help them learn so they’d be ready in case of a real emergency, he said.
New since the last drill were cameras inside the school, said Humphrey. Dispatch has access to the cameras and can relay messages to officers on the ground.
A weapons check made sure no live rounds were in the weapons so no accidents would occur during the drill, said Marengo Police Chief Ben Gray.
Officers used training guns and simulated rounds.
Evaluating the exercise were emergency workers from Mahaska, Jasper, Johnson, Dallas, Iowa and Appanoose Counties.
After receiving instructions, emergency workers waited in the staging area for the call to come, announcing that a shooting had occurred.
At Iowa Valley Elementary School, Linn County Emergency Management used stage makeup to create wounds on high school students who volunteered to act as victims.
The students were given cards explaining their injuries so they’d know how to act — whether they were dead, unconscious or unable to walk — and so emergency workers would know how to treat them.
“We construct moulage,” said Tom Ulrich. “We tell students what their injuries are like.”
The two most critical patients were to be sent to Compass Memorial Healthcare for the hospital’s part of the exercise. The other students were taken to the staging area and debriefed.
Students were given masks to protect their faces from sim rounds, though students weren’t in the area of the shooter during the exercise.
They were also warned of emotional stress they might feel even though the event was not real. “If you get nervous … when you get out there, just say, ‘Get me out of here,’” said Ulrich.
Exercises are meant to feel real, said Ulrich. A couple of college students suffered post-traumatic stress following an active shooter drill, he said.
“Play your part,” Ulrich told the students. No laughing. No cellphones. “Your part’s extremely important.”
Come at officers screaming, Ulrich told them. “Make it real.”
Two students — one playing dead — staged themselves in the entryway.
William Sayers, a sophomore, took his place in a hallway. Ulrich applied more blood to Sayer’s shirt.
Sayers played a student who was alive and could walk. Like the other students, Sayers volunteered for the exercise.
“It seemed like a cool thing, and they need to know how to do this,” Sayers said.
“I just think it was something we needed to be educated on,” said Hailey Dietze, a high school junior. She spent the drill in a doorway pretending to be dead.
Senior Owen Bral lay in a classroom with an unidentified head wound while Chance Hoyt lay nearby, unable to walk, with three gunshot wounds to the chest.
Shots were fired at the north side of the building. An officer entered a hallway and checked on an injured student, asking him what the shooter was wearing.
Kurt Behrens, an Iowa County jailer, acted as the gunman. He was “killed” during a shootout with police.
Even after the gunman was neutralized. Iowa County Sheriff’s Deputies and Marengo police keep their weapons ready as they check the building for victims.
Officers covered emergency workers as they took care of victims and evacuated them. Those in critical condition were carried out first. Those who could walk followed officers out.
“It was pretty eye-opening, I think,” Williamsburg Police Chief Justin Parsons told the Williamsburg City Council Monday night.
Parsons has taken part in active shooter drills since 2014, he said, and with the high turnover rate in rural police departments, it seems like they are always retraining people.
“That’s why we’re there,” he said, to make sure everyone knows what to do.
