Bloodied bodies littered the halls of the Orillia campus of Georgian College as two active shooters went on a reign of terror Wednesday morning. Thankfully, it was just a training exercise.
Dozens of police officers and first responders swept through the campus as part of the training exercise that put the college’s safety protocols and the OPP’s active threat response to the test.
The simulated training exercise involved two active shooters who left a trail of volunteer “victims” in their wake, with police working to neutralize the threat and help victims scattered about the campus, all in an effort to prevent school violence and ensure effective response in the case of a real threat.
As police advanced inside the campus, the college’s PA system blared a lockdown warning — urging those inside to hide, leave the building if possible, or prepare to fight the attacker as a last resort — while the victims, many of whom were adorned with mock wounds, convincingly cried out for help.
Though it lasted less than 30 minutes, the training exercise, code named Camden, is something college and OPP officials spent weeks preparing for as the college and emergency responders look to ensure timely and effective response to worst-case-scenario events.
“We prepare for the worst possibility,” said Dave Truax, Georgian’s executive director of campus safety services. “We certainly hope that an incident like this would never materialize anywhere in the province or in our country, but, obviously, we need to prepare for the worst, and we want to test all of our systems.”
He said the mock exercise was used to “test our communication systems, our response procedures; it allowed emergency responders to practise their skills and tactics, as well.”
The exercise was the first of its kind in several years for Georgian College, and presented the rare opportunity for first responders to practise their response and tactics in a simulated environment.
“Participating in exercises like this are super important for our officers,” said Orillia OPP Const. Shelby Russell. “It’s not every day that we get to respond to live calls like this, and being able to practise in the more real environment is really good for our training and our officers.”
Though the OPP has partnered with the college on similar exercises in the past, and practises rapid deployment strategies on an annual basis, Wednesday’s exercise was a relatively rare opportunity, Russell said.
“A scenario like this, where everyone is involved, and there’s actors and EMS here and making entries that we don’t normally get to practise — we don’t get to do this very often,” she said. “To have all the community partners here … it’s really amazing, and we’re very thankful that they wanted to partner to do this training for our officers.”
The training exercise also gave valuable insight to emergency response for the victims, comprised of student volunteers from several Georgian programs.
“It was a really great opportunity for us to get to see how triage works when you have multiple patients that you’re dealing with,” said Myshel Enderlein, a pre-service fire education and training student who volunteered as one of the exercise’s victims.
“In our EMR (emergency medical response) program, that’s something we talked about in theory, (but) getting it to participate in it is really eye opening.”
First responders debriefed outside the college following the exercise, with captured video to be brought back to the OPP detachment for further review.
“There’s always things that we can work on, and if we can improve to keep officers safe, then we’d like to improve,” Russell said. “Doing a debrief for this with everyone involved and having some videos and stuff like that to see and to share back at the detachment with other officers, and other detachments, it’s very important.”
Beyond testing the training for first responders and school staff, Operation Camden was also meant to aid in the following:
- Testing and validating existing plans, procedures, training, equipment and inter-agency communication;
- Improving inter-agency response, co-ordination and operation;
- Identifying gaps in training, resources and procedures as well as identify areas for improvement;
- Improving individual, organizational and community performance through practise; and
- Demonstrating community and organizational resolve to adequately prepare for and respond to emergencies of all types.
Though Ontario schools are required to carry out lockdown drills twice annually, and officers undergo yearly instruction on immediate rapid deployment and OPP in-service training, Operation Camden was a “unique opportunity” for first responders to train together, said a Georgian College news release.
