Cd’A school district to implement ‘Rapid Responder’

January 27, 2006
By Linda Ball
Coeur d’Alene Press

The Coeur d’Alene School District will be the first in Idaho to implement “Rapid Responder,” a software product used in all Washington state schools. The state-of-the-art crisis management system will give police, the sheriff’s department, fire department and other responders critical information about schools when they are responding to an emergency.

The district received a $248,427 Emergency Response and Crisis Management grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools to implement the system. Only 97 grants were awarded from 387 applicants.

Prepared Response Inc. of Seattle will bring the system to Coeur d’Alene. Their public relations manager, Gary Sabol, said the company was founded by two Pierce County, Wash., police officers. After the 1999 incident at Columbine High School in Colorado, where 15 people were killed and 24 more wounded, the two traveled to Columbine to research what could have been done to prevent the tragedy.

Prepared Response is currently working on mapping elementary and middle schools in Washington. The Coeur d’Alene system will include all 17 of the district’s schools.

“All schools in the district will have online applications designed for hostage situations,” Sabol said. “They will see aerial shots, exterior photos, interior photos and how to set up roadblocks. There will be 300 different pieces of information that they can pull up.”

Some of the other data points include floor plans, geospatial imagery, staging areas, hazardous materials quantities and locations, utility shut-offs and evacuation routes.

Rapid Responder was put to the test at Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane in September, 2003, when 16-year-old Sean Fitzpatrick brought a 9 mm pistol to school. Officers opened fire hitting him three times. Using the system, they were able to locate Room 307, where Fitzpatrick was holded-up. They also located the school’s gas shut-off, Sabol said, because Fitzpatrick was asking for matches.

The district selected Prepared Response from among nine bid proposals. The system is used by more than 4,200 facilities nationwide, including schools, stadiums, and other public and private facilities.