Active Shooter Drill Held at Crest Foods by Karen Yardley
Late last year, Crest Foods was contacted by local law enforcement to see if we would be interested in hosting an ac- tive shooter/mock crisis drill. This would mean allowing local police or sheriff ’s departments, fire departments and emergency medical services access to our facilities to practice what they would do in the case of such an event. Sgt. Matt McGrail of the Lee County Sheriff ’s Department was our contact. He visited Crest before the drill to find the best place suitable for such a drill that would be the least disruptive to Crest’s operations. The drill was scheduled for January 25th at the Ingredient Division Warehouse. Participants met at the old AFC Middle School in Franklin Grove, which was being used as a staging area. An Orientation and Safety Briefing was held before the drill began. Since the incident was in the Franklin Grove Fire Protection District, our old friend former employee and Fire Chief, Pat Hilliker, was Incident Command. Franklin Grove had four responders and one ambulance. The drill began with the intermittent release of police officers as if they were just receiving the communication over radio and actually responding. Officers entered the warehouse from multiple entrances and proceeded to search and secure the building. There were several ‘victims’ who were part of the drill. These victims were made up by a makeup artist to replicate injuries and were staged in multiple areas for the drill. Details about victims, their loca- tion and injury were communicated so that EMS would be prepared once they were able to respond. Once the building was cleared by police, EMS was allowed in. Ben Yates, A Shift Mix, who has been an EMT for a year, but has been with the Franklin Grove Fire Protection District for over 4 years, was able to participate in the drill and I followed up with him afterwards. When I asked him what he learned, he replied that this was the first time he had to deal with “triage” – or multiple injuries. He’s only ever responded to incidents with at the most two patients. In this case, the situation has to be assessed and a color coded system is used to determine priority. They were presented with several different injuries to respond to – eviscerations (or exposure of internal organs), gunshot wounds to the chest and leg, and “walking wounded”. Ben said he was surprised when during the drill at the Ingredient Division Warehouse, the call came over the radio that there was a second shooter at the Main Plant in Ashton. Resources had to transition to respond to that scene and he felt that went well. After the drill, there was a wrap up meeting back at “Command Center” in Franklin Grove, where the local departments could discuss the drill and what they learned.
For those of us here at Crest who witnessed any portion of the drill, it was quite an experi- ence to see the emergency responders all decked out in their gear and armed as if they were responding to an actual active shooter. While we hope to never have to use this information in the future, we feel that learned a lot and were provided with some excellent resources that might make us better prepared as a company. We will be working on formal training to use in our facilities that we will share with employees soon.
12 Crest Ink April, May & June 2017
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker