Calif. Responders Train Together for Mass Shootings

March 30--With guns drawn, small teams of officers went room to room at Washington Middle School in Cloverdale searching for the shooter. Not far behind, paramedics, with officers standing guard, were checking pulses, applying tourniquets and tying ribbons on victims: green for those who can walk, yellow for the seriously hurt, red for the most critical.

And there were black-and-white ribbons for the dead.

It was a drill.

With fake blood, pretend victims and blank ammunition cartridges, about 75 police, fire and ambulance personnel last week prepared for the kind of mass shooting all hope will never happen.

"One disgruntled student can create such havoc. We need to be prepared," Cloverdale Police Chief Stephen Cramer said.

Increasingly, fire and ambulance personnel are training alongside law enforcement on how to respond to mass shooting incidents.

"It's sad we have to practice this," said Tom Hinrichs, chief executive operator of the Cloverdale Health Care District, which provides ambulance services for an 85-square-mile area. "But these things can happen in little towns."

Nearly 500 people have died in 58 mass shootings since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, according to an analysis by the nonprofit news site Mother Jones.

Columbine is widely considered to have been a watershed moment for the tactical response to mass shootings. While it took the two students 16 minutes to kill 13 people and wound about two dozen others, it took law enforcement more than three hours to find the shooters, who were already dead from self-inflicted gunshots.

The delay was in part because the industry standard at the time called for officers to wait for the SWAT team. That's since changed.

"Instead of waiting, we go inside, even with just three cops, we go toward the threat," Sonoma County sheriff's SWAT member deputy Larry Matelli said.

Fire and medical response agencies have been slower to change. But more agencies are adopting policies to send personnel in behind police to more quickly triage the wounded.

In Petaluma, firefighters are now equipped with bullet-resistant vests alongside traditional fire and medical response gear. Petaluma was the first city in Sonoma County to create a joint police-fire policy and response strategy for active shooters.

Other cities like Santa Rosa are following suit, according to Petaluma firefighter paramedic Eric Mayer, that city's expert on medical response to mass shootings. He's now seeking grant money to buy ballistic helmets.

"As firefighters we go into burning buildings with a calculated risk and with protective gear," Mayer said. "We risk a lot to save a lot."

On Friday, he had a clipboard and an orange vest to observe the exercise held at the South Washington Street campus in Cloverdale. Sheriff's SWAT team members patted down all officers and deputies, then checked each weapon to ensure no live ammunition was inadvertently left inside.

Volunteers with fake blood and protruding bones had specific instructions on how to re-enact a shooting scenario.

Still, the gunfire echoing through campus and the subsequent sounds of panic were real enough.

Victims were strewn about campus calling for help as the first tactical team of officers began searching classrooms.

As officers headed toward a classroom, a student emerged and an officer yelled, "Can you walk?" The student nodded and the officer pointed and shouted, "Go out that way and turn left!"

With fake blood on her face, hands and clothes, 16-year-old Cloverdale sophomore Aly Bernal ran out of another room into an open air hallway and knelt beside a friend on the ground who had been "shot." She wailed, convincingly.

"It was scary. It felt real," Bernal said later. "I didn't know how to act. I didn't know how real it could be."

(c)2017 The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, Calif.)