9 minute read
Active Shooter
Managing the Active Shooter Attack or Hostile Incident
In November 2015 the world watched helplessly while nine terrorists executed the deadliest attack Ryan Scellick on France, since the second world war. The attack took the lives of 130 people while injuring another 413. This would later be described as a terrorist initiated “complex coordinated attack” or CCA. While the majority of first responders working in suburban and rural areas are unlikely to experience an attack of this complexity, we shouldn’t be complacent to the possibility that a well planned and executed attack anywhere in the United States, could quickly become complex in regards to your immediate resources. In this article we are going to discuss some of the concepts to help you prepare to manage the basic to complex hostile incident.
Advertisement
Pre-Planning
One of my mentors once told me that the most important piece of large-scale incident management, was “money and relationships.” In the past three articles we have described the amount of training and equipment it requires to be adequately prepared for a hostile incident. It is no secret; this
preparation comes at a cost. As with all things in emergency services, if the administration on the fire/ EMS side or law enforcement (LE) side, are not willing to invest in the program, the success will mirror the investment. When contracting with agencies I always like to encourage administrators that the cost of training and equipment is a drop in the bucket compared to the political and emotional cost of failing to succeed in a future hostile incident.
Building relationships may be the most important component to the pre-planning of a hostile incident. All of the money in the world will be of little value if egos and jurisdiction disputes rule the day. These incidents are not managed by fire or police, they are managed by fire and police. If you have non-fire-based EMS, they will be a critical player and need to be at the table every bit as much as fire and law. From there, the relationships need to continue to grow beyond responders. Hospital staff, school officials, Red Cross, and local transit officials just to name a few are all critical players in the successful management of a hostile incident.
In my jurisdiction, local school officials have gone as far as consulting with fire and law to set standard construction practices that will enhance preparedness and response capabilities should an active shooter event happen. Do your hospitals mass casualty channel. This initial information incident (MCI) plans integrate is going to be critical for the IC with your active shooter plans? to hear firsthand, not repeated Has your hospital considered how through fire/EMS dispatch. many gunshot victims they can Once on scene, the IC should take, compared to the injuries establish a forward tactical experienced in a typical bus crash? operations post and assign a staging
One of the most challenging manager. This will be located in the pre-planning tasks I have ever cold zone but away from staging. An done was planning for an active on-duty battalion or district chief shooter incident that started in the will be best suited in an operations hospital. Making the investment position or as FEMA refers to it, — physically and financially — “triage group supervisor.” In the in pre-planning, is likely going to initial stages this individual will be the most critical component likely be command, but as the for success in managing a low incident expands, command should complexity multi-patient shooting be taken over by LE with fire/ incident, or a complex coordinated EMS chiefs who are in a mobile or attack. fixed command post. This leaves the initial IC still making tactical Initial Operations decisions from a forward operating
As all emergent operations do, position. strategic thinking starts at the To replace the first arriving time of dispatch. No different chief officer and take them out of than a structure fire, the Incident tactical decision making would Command (IC) should be be catastrophic in a complex, considering resources compared rapidly evolving event like a hostile to possible complexity before the incident. The best place to put a keys to BC buggy are ever turned forward tactical operations post on. The first due IC should start is best decided by LE. Under the considering known and unknown FEMA PER 335 program, the fifth variables. Some of the known arriving officer is tasked with factors are: taking command of the incident 1. Building size and occupancy and not making entry. The first potential vs. time of day arriving chief officer should 2. First due and mutual aid coordinate with this LE officer and resources establish a safe place to set the 3. Capabilities and limitations of forward operating post. Once a responders more senior LE supervisor arrives, 4. Initial hot, warm and cold zone they will take command from the areas “fifth man who becomes “tactical.”
Some of the unknown variables: Just like fire, leaving the initial 1. Law enforcement availability law enforcement IC in the forward and response times tactical position is critical for 2. Current hospital capacity and continuity. Under the FEMA capabilities guidelines, LE becomes the overall 3. Number of shooters Incident Commander working in 4. Types of weapons conjunction with fire and EMS. This 5. Potential IEDs shouldn’t be a territorial debate 6. Actual patient numbers that it often is; the majority of 7. Dispatch information. operations during this incident,
I encourage all initial ICs to law enforcement is going to associate resources with occupancy be responsible for. With strong potential and never dispatch relationships built prior to the information. If you listen to radio incident, LE will likely rely on the traffic from most active shooter incident management experience incidents, you will notice the of the fire department. patient numbers start in the single digits and can end up being closer to 10 to 15 times that, as was the When to Launch the Rescue Task Force case in the Aurora Theater shooting. The next big tactical and On duty incident commanders strategic decision is when to switch should have access to an LE radio from an LE mission, to a rescue or the availability to scan their operation, or in other words, when do you launch the Rescue Task
Force (RTF)? In general, it should be immediately following the capture, containment, or killing of the active shooter. However, there is a multitude of variables that are going to affect this; I.E. what if there is reports of two shooters, what if the shooter left the premises, what if there is report of IED’s? The short answer is that the LE officer and the first arriving fire/ EMS commander standing next to each other, are going to plan based on the totality of the information they have at that time. These two decision makers are going to have to conduct a threat analysis and decide if the known risks and unknown risks are mitigated to a sufficient level to support placing fire/EMS into the warm zone.
Just remember, the warm zone will never be without risk, however, if we rely on FBI data that studied 13 years of active shooter incidents, we can glean the following information; by the time fire/EMS has arrived on scene, donned PPE, and made entry to the warm zone (greater than five minutes), there is a 98 percent chance the shooter has been killed, killed themselves, fled the scene and is actually a lone shooter (www.fbi.gov, 2014). This data pretty easily justifies the statistical safety of early entry of rescue task forces into the warm zone.
Once rescue task forces are deployed, a transport group supervisor should be added to the forward operating post. This will make sure that ambulances are coordinated with tactical and RTF movements. The transport supervisor should coordinate where to set up “ambulance exchange points” or AEPs, these are where RTFs will transfer patients to ambulances. They should also be responsible for spinning up your regional MCI plan with the hospital as well as coordinating patient transport. AEPs can also be casualty collection points (CCP). In incidents where patients are spread across large geographical areas, AEPs and CCPs will be spread across the incident. Don’t get trapped in a traditional single CCP mindset, this is not a bus crash.
As this incident expands, there will be a need to implement more command staff at the Command Post as much as there is a need to supplement boots on the ground. In in the early stages of the incident, tough decisions will have to be made to fill operational positions or supervisory positions. While it may seem important to have an IC, fire/ med branch supervisor, transport group supervisor, and staging officer in place prior to launching your RTF; it is of little utility if you have no one to staff the RTF. Possibly worse, all the patients have now perished in the time it took to set up a text book command structure. In the initial stages, the first arriving IC may be the entire command structure to facilitate getting responders treating and extracting victims. We must always remember, that if victims are not treated rapidly, we are really just managing the patients that would have survived regardless of us responding.
Recap
Let’s recap a few of the fundamentals we have discussed; pre planning and training will decide the success of your incident long before it ever happens. Without a commitment to financial support and building relationships, your incident performance will be a mirror of your commitment level. Strategic thinking starts at dispatch with known and unknown variables. The first on scene chief officer should be standing next to an LE supervisor as soon as possible. Well-staffed command structures are great, unless it is at the cost of boots on ground, treating victims rapidly. Finally, we must always remember that even the best planned and trained for hostile incidents will at best, be controlled chaos, we must remember the mission; treat, extract and transport as many victims as fast as possible.
Ryan Scellick is a 19-year fire service veteran and currently serves as a Ladder Captain in Pasco, WA. He spent five years a commissioned SWAT Operator and Tactical Paramedic. He teaches nationally with his company Active Shooter Solutions and Consulting since 2010 and as an adjunct instructor for Fire by Trade. He can be reached at ryan@ activeshootersolutions.us.
