‘This training is priceless’ – FRPD Chief cites inter-agency relationships, fine tuning of methods in active shooter exercise

Before departing the Thursday, April 22nd Active Violent/Mass Casualty Incident Training Exercise (aka active shooter training), Royal Examiner tried to get a feel for the scope and potential impact of the three days on participants from area law enforcement, medical, and emergency services. During our Emergency Room visit, we spoke with one Valley Health observer about those impacts. In addition to Warren Memorial Hospital staff on training day three, personnel involved over the first two days included staff from all of Valley Health’s hospitals – Winchester Medical Center, Shenandoah Memorial, and Page County in addition to WMH, as well as the Critical Access and Acute Care Departments. Valley Health staff alone accounted for 95 people present on day one, about 80 on day two, with Thursday’s count not yet tabulated while we were there.

“By the time it’s all said and done, we’ll have 300 people trained in these different areas,” ER Clinical Manager Delores Gehr said of medical, law enforcement, and emergency services participants, as well as Air Care and some community participants like HAM radio operators who asked to be involved. “So, it’s been an incredible opportunity to, not only help our entire team out but to really make sure we’re here to serve the community in the most efficient way that we can.”

Multi-agency response is illustrated in this parking area of some of the involved vehicles. Below, when a medical transport helicopter is needed at the new Warren Memorial Hospital, it won’t have to land in a parking lot – this heliport is next to the ER parking area toward Leach Run Parkway, just out of frame to left in next photo of hospital. Royal Examiner Photos by Roger Bianchini

Then on our stop at the Unified Incident Command Post, we took the opportunity to speak with Front Royal Police Chief Kahle Magalis on the process and benefits of three days of intensive training in a life and death context. In addition to Front Royal Police, the Warren County Sheriff’s Office, County Fire & Rescue, and the Valley Health personnel named above, Magalis acknowledged participants from related agencies Air Care, Valley Medical Transport, and regional hospital coalition RHCC.

“This training is priceless – and we’ve gotten a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, even though we’re kind of modifying how the exercise is, to be able to work in the new building and have all the personnel that would be involved in something like this have intimate knowledge of the layout of the building to more appropriately respond in the event anything should ever happen here, but also if something happens somewhere else a lot of it’s going to end up here. And they’ll have to manage things even if the event’s not here at the hospital. So, we’ve been able to build some really good relationships with Valley Health, which we’ve had in the past, but we’ve further solidified some of those relationships.

“So, to start from day one to day three, we’ve started to try to modernize some new techniques and protocols for dealing with these types of things. Actually, we began working on some of these operations last year,” the FRPD chief observed. “This is kind of the next phase. We’ve still got work to do. But the nice thing about going from where we started with the basic concepts training our folks up and actually be able to put it into play, is we’ve been able to identify the things that we are doing well and identify situations where we need improvement, especially with patients,” the chief acknowledged of this specific training site.

For a hospital that’s not open yet, there was a lot of activity, and not just construction or site work, at the new WMH this week. As noted above, the heliport is just out of frame to left beyond the gray EM1 vehicle at the top left.

“It’s never going to go perfect – something like this is always chaos. So, the goal is to try to prepare to be able to control as much of that chaos as we can. I think it’s been a fantastic opportunity to find out where some of those gaps are, so we can fill them. And we’ve already just over the course of the past few days we’ve been able to find spots where we can fix things pretty quickly and identify, work on and adjust.”

Among those adjustments are modifying concepts developed in larger population areas where more response resources are available, the chief pointed out. “And we’ve been able to identify, here’s how we’ll have to scale things in order to actually be able to make our smaller organizations operate effectively.”

First responder staging area on Valley Health Way on the north side of the property. By the time this photo was taken, most units had staged toward the hospital. Below, some of those first responders, and observers, on the third-floor training area during Thursday’s training exercise.

We asked Chief Magalis if departmental radio communications upgrades sought by county agencies in recent years had impacted the multi-agency response exercise. “The County’s (sheriff’s office) got their radio system pretty well squared away. We’ve got our new radio system – we both have gotten new radio systems within the past two years. Fire & Rescue is in the process now of upgrading its radio systems. And once they get their system finalized, then the hope is we’ll be able to create between the three of us, have at least one unified channel that we can all go to, and talk to each other. That’s kind of been the over-arching goal of all this since we started,” the chief said of facilitating direct inter-departmental radio communications both in the field and from command centers to all field units.

Sounds like a good idea and Town and County tax revenue put to good use, as was this week’s three-day training exercise – though the universal hope is that the mission those 300 or so participants trained for is never needed to be put into action in this community.

The Unified Incident Command Post took the high ground during Thursday’s ‘active shooters’ exercise.