Students lay on the ground outside Taylor Hall on Mississippi University for Women’s campus Thursday morning as sirens wailed and reports of shooters, hostages and fatalities came over the radios of nearby law enforcement officers.
The gratuitous blood dripping from gaping head wounds and other gashes was fake — applied by students from the university’s theater department hours earlier — but the officers and first responders picking their way through the “bodies” and controlling the crowds of onlookers were acting as they would in a real emergency situation on campus.
MUW partnered with local and state law enforcement agencies and first responders for a multi-agency emergency drill involving multiple fatalities to test communications between organizations. First responders from Baptist Memorial Hospital Ambulance Services, reporters from various media outlets and officers from the Columbus Police Department, the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office, Columbus Air Force Base, Columbus Fire and Rescue and other agencies all participated in the scenario.
Multiple agencies get together to hold a large-scale emergency drill on MUW’s campus every year, said Curtis Jernigan, an emergency response coordinator from the Mississippi State Department of Health who helped organize Thursday’s exercise.
“We’ve done several,” he said. “And they seem to grow every year.”
In years past, agencies have acted out fires and natural disasters. Last year, they simulated a chemical spill on train tracks near the campus. This year, organizers wanted to focus on an active shooter scenario because of the prominence of mass shooting reports in media over the last couple of years, Columbus Lowndes County Emergency Management Agency director Cindy Lawrence said.
“If an active shooter (situation) actually happened, then we want to be ready for it,” Lawrence said.
Scenario details
The scenario was this: A CPD officer attempted a traffic stop without backup near Tampico Bay, a restaurant just east of MUW’s campus, and a shooting occurred. One civilian was killed, and the officer was critically injured, taken to Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle and unable to report back to law enforcement what had happened.
Meanwhile, a call to 911 reported a man with a gun heading toward campus.
MUW went into lockdown, but two shooters managed to get into Taylor Hall, shooting and killing some students and taking others hostage.
About 130 students were involved in the scenario, either as victims or as witnesses. Witnesses stood in clumps around Taylor Hall while officers kept them away from the “victims” lying on the ground faking injuries or playing dead.
Students and media were encouraged to test officers by asking aggressive questions, accusing them of not doing their jobs properly or even trying to get into the Taylor Hall while the “shooter” was still inside with hostages. Some students refused to leave the sides of injured friends or tried to run back into Taylor Hall where officers stopped them at the door.
That’s how Tanner Stewart, a junior in MUW’s nursing program, ended up in handcuffs outside the building. One of the witnesses who had kept coming back to try to save friends and badger first responders, he was asked to go sprinting after a “victim” who first responders carried out of the hall. He supposedly saw his mother being carried out and ran toward her.
“I was running and I saw them telling me to stop and didn’t,” he said.
An officer in combat gear grabbed Stewart and put his hands behind his back while another swept him to the ground, put a knee on his back and cuffed him.
A few minutes later, officers took the handcuffs off the now laughing Stewart and he headed back to the crowd of watching students, who applauded his performance.
‘Everybody has a task’
In the scenario, law enforcement “terminated” the two shooters within about an hour-and-a-half, according to Edmund Brock, a public information officer with CFR. The death toll was 16 and the number of serious injuries was 36, he said.
Brock has been with CFR three years, but it was his first time participating in a large-scale drill.
“It was actually rather interesting to see,” Brock said. “Especially the media, because media’s going to respond differently than we are. We’re trained to keep people back. Y’all are trained to get information. So for us, everybody has a task … I was assigned to the media, so my job was to keep you back and give you information as I received it. Whereas EMS comes in, they have a task. SWAT team comes in, they have a task. It’s just, there’s so many parts of it that go together, and it looks like mass confusion but it’s actually not.”
It was important that everyone do their job correctly, Brock said — even when they’re being badgered by onlookers, which is what happened to the Special Weapons and Tactics team when it passed a group of injured students who yelled for their help. The team didn’t stop, on their way to find the shooter, but EMTs were on the scene only a few minutes later, trying to get students to leave injured friends and assessing which ones were dead or critically injured by checking tags the students wore around their necks.
Several students were taken to Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle as part of the drill. On the scene were ambulances and one Columbus Municipal School District am-bus, a school bus with seats replaced by stretchers and which can carry up to 14 people, Lawrence said.
She said overall she was pleased with how well the drill went. Representatives from each agency will get together for a “hot wash” following the drill to discuss what went well and what improvements could be made to communications.
“Coming up on the anniversary of Sept. 11, the tragedy, we lost so many first responders during that event,” Lawrence said. “It’s just important that … you write a plan and practice your plan. That way if an actual event happens, then you’re prepared for anything.”
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