Conn. Responders Training for Active Shooter Response

Dec. 27--On a late October day, Fairfield police, firefighters, and members of the local branch of American Medical Response ran a drill at the Fairfield Public Schools, testing everyone on how they'd respond if there was a shooting at one of the schools.

"The call started out as a benign dumpster fire, then it turned out that was just a distraction, and it was actually an active shooter," Bill Schietinger, general manager of AMR Fairfield County operations, said of the drill.

It's the kind of exercise AMR companies do on a fairly regular basis, meant to measure everyone's response time and knowledge about what to do in an emergency. In most cases, Schietinger said, people play their roles and, when the dry run is over, they return to business as usual, hoping they'll never need to use the skills they've just tested.

But that wasn't the case with the Fairfield drill. Within 48 hours of that dry run, telephoned threats forced an actual lockdown of all 17 Fairfield schools, with 10,000 children in them. The threats -- which included claims of bombs at Ludlowe and Warde high schools, and a man with an M16 assault rifle headed to Holland Hill Elementary -- thankfully didn't bear fruit.

Still, the incident was a stark reminder of the new world order, Schietinger said. "It was eye opening, to sit there and realize this can actually happen," he said.

A common occurrence

In fact, there are constant, devastating reminders of how often these incidents happen. On Dec. 2, a shooting in San Bernandino, Calif. left at least 14 dead. Mere days before that, a man shot several people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo., killing at least three. It seems nowhere is safe -- including Connecticut, where residents recently recognized the third anniversary of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, in which 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot 20 children and six adults.

In most of these kinds of events, EMS and fire personnel are mainly supporting players, allowing police to take the lead until the other agencies can step in start treating the injured. "In a potential active shooter situation, law enforcement leads the response," said Department of Public Health spokesman Christopher Stan. "The role of EMS is to care for the injured or ill, whether victims or first responders. The department and its Office of Emergency Medical Services are part of Connecticut's efforts to enhance our response capabilities to all events, including those involving the use of weapons."

But given the increasingly real threat of a mass casualty event, some emergency personnel are adjusting the way they respond in these incidents. That includes AMR of Fairfield County -- which handles emergency response in Bridgeport and Fairfield -- as well as the Fairfield Fire Department.

"The EMS role in these situations has always been to sit back at a safe distance and wait for the threat to be over and take care of people," Schietinger said. "Now we're looking at shifting the focus to treating people faster."

Fairfield Fire Chief Denis McCarthy echoed those thoughts. "There is an imperative to learn from the events happening around the country," said McCarthy, who also served on the state's Sandy Hook Advisory Committee.

Both Schietinger and McCarthy said adjusting the way fire and EMS personnel respond in these incidents will take time, and require training to make these responders as prepared -- and safe -- as possible. "We're entering an active crime scene that may still be active, so our approach needs to be a little different," McCarthy said.

Stopping the bleeding

That includes better preparing responders for the kind of injuries common during a mass shooting -- namely rapid blood loss from an arterial wound. AMR of Fairfield County just bought eight "active assailant kits," which include such items as trauma pads and tourniquets designed to staunch the bleeding from arterial injuries. AMR paramedics will soon begin training on how to use the tourniquets, and McCarthy said he hopes Fairfield fire will soon start training on the equipment as well.

Schietinger said, unfortunately, these tourniquets will likely become an essential part of emergency response, mainly because of how common mass casaulty incidents have become. He likened them to automated external defibrillators, used to restore regular heart rhythm in those who go into cardiac arrest. In recent years, there has been a push to have AEDs in every building, and make sure as many people as possible are trained to use them. In today's environment, Schietinger said, "there should be an arterial tourniquet to the AED in every building."

The interest in altering the way emergency responders handle shootings goes back to the Sandy Hook shooting, said Fred DellaValle, vice president of government relations for the East Region of AMR. The local AMR assisted in the response to the shooting and "that went to the heart of a lot of people in the EMS community, DellaValle said. "Everybody came back with a sense of urgency that we really need to focus on this."

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