Roads were blocked, blank shots were fired and actors wept fake tears and bled fake blood as local law enforcement and emergency response teams staged a school-shooting and E.D. White Catholic High School yesterday morning to practice each agency’s role in the event that the incident should ever happen in Thibodaux.
A large number of agencies participated in the exercise, including Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office, Thibodaux Police Department, Golden Meadow Police Department, Port Fourchon Harbor Police, Louisiana State Police, Louisiana Probation and Parole, Nicholls State University, Lafourche Parish School Board, Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux, Thibodaux Regional Medical Center, Acadian Ambulance, Lafourche Parish Office of Emergency Preparedness, Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness and the Louisiana Emergency Response Network.
“What has been done is all of the agencies have planned a scenario that’s involving the school system, the first responders, the local state authorities and the hostpitals,” Craig Webre, Lafourche Parish Sheriff, said. “They implemented it this morning so that we could coordinate, evaluate and improve how we respond to a disaster in the event that it should actually occur.”
Police officers carrying fake handguns, SWAT Team members wearing full armor, and medical personnel moved across the school’s campus clearing buildings and securing students while also searching for the acting shooter from 8:00 a.m. until noon.
Each student wore a nametag during the exercise, stating if they were uninjured, injured or dead.
Officers escorted students to safe areas, carrying the injured and the dead and transported them to designated medical facilities by way of ambulance or police patrol car.
The acting did not stop there, however, as other actors gathered in various places posing as parents, business owners and nearby residents. Officers stood by these groups to keep them calm and safe throughout the exercise.
“There are probably well over a hundred people involved in various roles, not counting the responders,” Webre said. “I’m talking about the actors, evaluators and people controlling the scenarios in one way or another.”
Webre also said that the response teams in the exercise worked without any preparation other than the fact that they knew there was a scenario. They also did not respond in a “full emergency code of response.”
“We don’t want anyone getting hurt, but we want them responding as real-life as possible to test the participants’ reactions and decision-making skills,” Webre said.
Serena Martin, a resident just near the school, watched everything happen even though she was not part of the exercise.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before, so I though it would be really interesting so see how they respond to situations like this,” Martin said. “I really didn’t know this much work was put in to stuff like this. It gives me a much better appreciation for what the police went through in Boston.”
Nicholls provided parking near the football stadium for some response vehicles and functioned as it normally would during the summer session, but things would be much different if an incident like the exercise ever took place.
While E.D. White had direct involvement in terms of the practiced scenario, Webre said all educational institutions near by such as Nicholls are close enough to the proximity of the incident that they should be in a lockdown scenario.
“The expectation is that they would lock down certainly in a live, actual event if there were an active shooter or potential shooter-hostage situation on or near a school campus,” Webre said.
This was not the first time that an event like this took place. Webre said that multi-agency coordinative exercises are held at least every three or four years.
“We want to continue to improve our response strategies and make sure that when necessary, and if the event ever did occur, that all of the agencies would work together in the best way possible,” Webre said. “There is no way a single agency has all of the response capabilities to handle that kind of an incident. We are in the city of Thibodaux, and we have the same jurisdiction, so naturally we will all be responding together.”