Local law enforcement and first responders participate in an active shooter training scenario at Shadow Ridge High School, Wednesday, May 30, 2018.
Friday, June 1, 2018 | 2 a.m.
Spooked birds flapped their wings into the sunny sky Wednesday morning as the simulated explosion kicked off the active shooter exercise at a northwest valley high school.
A thundering pop from a smoke bomb imitating a car fire meant the drill had begun, and as law enforcement and firefighters probed the fog, fake automatic-style rounds went off inside — an armed duo had commenced a mass-casualty incident.
Momentarily, teen actors — some with backpacks, some holding their hands up — fled Shadow Ridge High School while Southern Nevada law enforcement rushed in.
A Metro Police helicopter circled above and took fake gunfire before officers descended from it onto the school’s roof.
“Statistically speaking,” said John Steinbeck, deputy chief of the Clark County Fire Department and the jurisdiction’s emergency manager, “it’s much more dangerous for our kids and for us to drive to school than it ever is going to be being at the school even with all of the media coverage that’s been on the school violence.”
“But it does occur,” Steinbeck said. “We want to be at the very highest possible level to respond to that.”
It’s not unusual for first responders to participate in active-shooter, mass-casualty drills, but it’s also not a coincidence that Wednesday’s large-scale training was held at a school, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said.
Due to recent school shootings, and similar tragedies such as the Oct. 1 massacre, “it was appropriate for us to conduct an exercise to test our preparedness and response to a critical incident,” Lombardo added. Response and communications systems were being evaluated.
Las Vegas-area police, firefighters, the FBI, and even a bomb squad, participated in the exercise, the most sizable to ever be conducted in the valley, Lombardo said. The Attorney General’s Office would evaluate the legal aspects of the response.
“That’s the goal of having one of these exercises,” said Aaron Rouse, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas division. “It’s not how great you are, but where you need to improve … (to) take lessons to improve so that during the next event — which may come tomorrow or whenever — we’re going to be in the best position to provide the best support and the best relief to this community.”
A drill on Wednesday’s scale could take over six months to prepare, Steinbeck said, but this one took less than two.
After the exercise, organizers would meet for a debriefing, and sometime at a later date, the different agencies will draft a report, which findings would determine future training, Steinbeck said.
Although the rifle staccatos were fake, arriving patrol officers, then SWAT personnel, then medics, were on full alert as they weren’t privy to the script. Overheard radio chatter indicated “reports of shots fired … multiple gunshot victims.”
Some students ran out holding their limbs, fake blood on their bodies. Firefighters were then seen carrying out dummies, which purportedly represented the more seriously hurt victims.
Soon enough, it would be clear to everyone that two armed people had breached the school, entered the library and theater and fired indiscriminately.
