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One step ahead of a rampage
by Stacy Schwandt The Spokesman-Review Staff Program gives emergency workers an edge in dealing with a school attack If a shooter goes on a rampage in any of the 10 West Valley schools, local authorities will be ready. Firefighters and sheriff's deputies will be able to call up a computer program with aerial maps and digital photos of the school, the locations of gas and water lines and a preliminary game plan for a multiagency response. "It's preplanning," said Spokane County Sheriff Mark Sterk. "The more preplanning we do, the more lives we can save." Sterk was joined by Spokane Valley Fire Chief Mark Grover and West Valley Superintendent Dave Smith on Tuesday to unveil the new Rapid Responder program, an emergency preparedness program built by Tacoma-based Prepared Response and funded by the Legislature. In an attack "we all come together and the result is chaos," Smith said. "The trick is to reduce it so we can help as many kids as possible." Using a digital camera, officials took dozens of interior and exterior photos of the schools. They determined where to set up roadblocks, stage SWAT teams and send students to be reunited with parents. "This is a very powerful tool," Grover said. "I think it has a lot of potential in our community." School and law enforcement officials have already begun to map District 81's Lewis and Clark High School. Central Valley School District's two new high schools are next on the list. The House passed the bill that created the Rapid Responder program in 2001 and allocated $450,000 to two statewide police and fire agencies to administer it. The agencies contracted with Prepared Response to start the program in schools in King, Snohomish, Pierce and Kitsap counties. The Pierce County Sheriff's Department has used the program in two tense situations since it was built over a year ago. In one case, deputies received a call reporting a gunman had taken hostages in the main office of a Lakewood, Wash., junior high school. Though police later determined the call was a hoax, officers consulted the responder program's floor plans and were able to evacuate students from the school without alerting anyone in the office. "After the building was clear they entered the office and discovered there wasn't a problem," said Pierce County Detective Ed Troyer. "But the system still worked." In the second case, floor plans helped police officers decide they could send a robot in to get a homemade grenade out of a student's locker. That saved an officer from the dangerous task. The responder program also cuts down on communication problems between agencies by providing a message board where command centers can send up-to-the-minute information. Police responding to the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado later estimated they lost crucial time because officers were not on the same radio channels or because fire and police used two types of radios. "Getting police and fire together to plan for emergencies is very important," said Marti Wagner, director of national implementation for Prepared Response. "It's nice to know that everyone's talking in the same language." |
| Media Contact For further information, please contact: Gary Sabol Public Relations Manager gsabol@preparedresponse.com O 206.223.5544 |