Gunshots rang out in a Coral Gables school. It was just a drill.

Students scrambled as an alarm echoed down the hallways of Coral Gables Senior High School. The speakers had announced “Code Red” just seconds prior.

Droves of officers dashed in within minutes. They pointed their handguns as they scanned the premises, their staticky radios blaring.

“Active shooter at 450 Bird Road.”

Fortunately, Friday’s events at the high school were staged — a practice run involving several policing agencies in Miami-Dade on how to react to an active shooter situation. Though Miami-Dade Schools Police has been staging the events for years, recent mass shootings at a school in Uvalde, Texas, a July Fourth parade in Highland Park, Illinois, and a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, have once again placed active shooter training in a spotlight.

During Friday’s dry run, Miami-Dade and Miami-Dade Schools Police raced to block exits, confront the shooter and protect Coral Gables Fire Rescue teams as they made their way to the injured. Local healthcare professionals looked on. So did school district leaders, some of whom said the staged event struck a nerve.

“When I heard, not just the gunshots because they were so real to me, but... when I heard the screams of those children,” Miami-Dade School Board member Mari Tere Rojas said. “I could only imagine what those that have already gone through this horrific experience went through and what their last moments were like.”

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Rojas and others could only watch for about 45 minutes, until officers did a final sweep of the property. But before they did, injured students — played by Police Explorers — wailed, pleading for help as police sprinted in and out of the building. Police dripping in sweat ushered students in blood-soaked shirts into a bathroom.

Though the radio announced that the shooter had been neutralized within 10 minutes, police took no chances.

Medics entered only with police protection after officers secured every open door inside the building. When that was done, medics and police wrapped tourniquets around the students’ wounds. They counted the injured children and sorted them into “reds” and “yellows,” based on who needed more urgent medical attention. Red meant critical.

After the building was locked down, police and fire rescue personnel lugged dummies in white body bags and draped live crying victims over their shoulders. Police escorted witnesses out of classrooms and instructed them to keep their hands up.

Addressing the media after the drill, Miami-Dade Schools Police Chief Edwin Lopez said when parents drop their kids off at school they expect them to learn and socialize with peers — and come home safely. The chief said every second counts in an active shooter situation and that officers are trained to react and confront the shooter as quickly as possible.

“We are willing to die for that cause,” he said. “We stand ready to respond with the same level of aggression, the same level of force, the same level of violence presented to our cops.”

At one point, the chief mentioned the heavily scrutinized delayed police response to the Uvalde school shooting that left 21 students and teachers dead. Lopez said the Miami-Dade Schools Police has nearly 500 officers with police assigned to every campus. And the schools, he said, keep gates and doors locked.

The chief said drills actually take place year-round, but mostly during the summer months when students are away. This summer, in addition to Friday’s practice run, Lopez hopes to have up to 15 more active shooter, bomb and hostage training sessions throughout the county.

“We can’t necessarily know where a critical incident is going to happen,” he said. “So we make sure our officers are trained in different landscapes.”

The chief also urged parents to monitor their children’s behavior and their use of social media.

“We need you as much as you need us,” he said.