Salem-Keizer schools, law enforcement to start yearly mass evacuation drills

Salem-Keizer Public Schools will begin holding yearly mass evacuation drills.

The goal is to hone coordination among district officials and police, fire, medical and other responders, said Chris Baldridge, the district’s director of safety and risk management.

“What we’ve seen in other situations where this happens, if you don’t have good working relationships between all these intergovernmental agencies, these have a tendency to have a really bad outcome,” Baldridge said.

Last year, 19 students and two teachers were killed during a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Police officers waited nearly 75 minutes to breach the classroom and engage the shooter during what critics later called an uncoordinated response.

Salem-Keizer has never had a real mass evacuation event, and previously had never drilled for one, Baldridge said.

The district held its first simulated mass evacuation last July, with about 45 adult participants playing students.

“We purposely did it after school got out,” Baldridge said. “We didn’t want to cause any panic within the community.”

Participants included the Salem and Keizer police departments, Marion County Sheriff’s Office, the Oregon State Police, Marion County, Salem and Keizer fire departments, Salem Health and multiple school district departments.

“From that training we quickly realized best practice is to do this every year, and really work as a region to standardize what that process is,” Baldridge said. “If something tragic were to happen in our schools, we know it’s not going to be perfect, but we can at least be a bit more well-oiled.”

Active assailant scenario

Baldridge declined to discuss the exact scenario used during the training, which took place at the district’s Career Technical Education Center on Portland Road NE.

“I can tell you we practiced for an active assailant inside of the school,” he said. “That allowed us to do everything from start to finish — 911 calls, dispatchers sending in officers, letting police bring in their officers, then medical personnel behind them, to finally wrapping up our piece, which is the relocation of the kids.”

The exercise allowed the district to test multiple safety features, including lockdown systems, cameras inside buildings and emergency management software.

“Even though it was a drill, boy, everybody treated it as if it was real, and the stress got really high, really quick,” Baldridge said.

'A logistical nightmare'

Overall, the exercise was successful, said Juan Benavidez, the district’s emergency management specialist.

Perhaps most useful was building relationships with all the different agencies, and learning how each agency’s systems and procedures work and fit together, Benavidez said.

But officials also identified weak spots.

“Probably our biggest takeaway from the district’s perspective is the coordination of moving students from one site to another site is a logistical nightmare,” Baldridge said.

“What would seem to be a very simple process of saying bus No. 1 go to this location is actually not a simple thing at all,” he said. “We ran into issues with clogged lanes of travel, miscommunications between our two command posts talking with each other, and it really slowed that process down.”

There also were challenges finding the students at the relocation site and getting them back to their parents (or in this case, actors back to their cars), Baldridge said.

“It was really slow. And we know that our parents are not going to want to wait,” he said.

“We’re working on systems now to speed that relocation process up so that we can hopefully provide some relief to that anxiety of, ‘Is my child OK?’”

Future mass evacuation drills will be held after the end of every school year, district officials said.

Tracy Loew covers education at the Statesman Journal. Send comments, questions and tips: tloew@statesmanjournal.com or 503-399-6779. Follow her on Twitter at @Tracy_Loew

This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Salem-Keizer Public Schools to do yearly mass evacuation drills