Pittsburgh Carrick High School was eerily hushed Friday morning as guards in the first-floor security booth toggled between feeds from the building’s surveillance cameras. Students and staff were ready.
“Attention, this is a drill,” Principal Angel Washington’s voice boomed over the intercom. “There is an active shooter entering the Westmont doors ... Please begin your ALICE protocol.”
The training, which prepares students to deal with an active shooter, has become common at many schools in the wake of repeated mass shootings across the country in recent years.
Such drills can’t prevent school shootings. In Parkland, Fla., Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had run students through active shooter training before a young man killed 17 people last month, according to the Washington Post. But many schools contend that the training remains a necessary safety measure, and can reduce casualties even if it often can’t stop them.
“This is the world we live in now,” Ms. Washington said.
On Friday morning, two men clad in black hoodies, armed with cap guns, charged through a back entrance. The security team spotted it from their office and traced the intruders’ path throughout the building.
Then fake gunfire began. The intruders roamed the hallways, twisting locked door handles along the way.
After hearing they had entered on the opposite side of the building from his classroom, Walt Milinski, a health and physical education teacher, led his students out a back door to a prearranged meetup spot nearby.
“All morning, I could tell the kids have been anxious about it,” Mr. Milinski said.
But when the drill started, they snapped into action, relying on experience from previous training sessions.
Lenny Orbovich, an 11th-grade U.S. history teacher, decided his class was better served securing the door and hunkering down. He grabbed a green ratchet strap and fastened it around the doorknob and metal box nearby — an extra layer of protection intruders would have had to break through.
“The key thing is to make it more difficult for anyone trying to get in,” Pittsburgh Public Schools spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said.
Classrooms have “safety buckets” filled with emergency supplies, including gloves, a first-aid kit, duct tape and a tarp. The buckets can double as toilets if students are quarantined in a classroom for an extended period during an emergency. The tarps are for those who are injured or cold.
Diamond Coleman, an 11th-grade student, said the drill stirred up anxiety knowing that the scenario — while highly unlikely — is possible. She could hear the snapping from the fake gunfire as the intruders walked by her classroom.
“It was scary,” she said. “I feel like we shouldn’t have to do things like this, but in this day and age, it’s something we really have to do.”
Aside from simulating an active shooter response for students and teacher, the drill helps officials identify vulnerabilities at the school. One lesson: Organizers acknowledged Carrick needs an intercom feed in the security booth, so guards can sound the alarm the moment a threat appears on their screens.
Officials know the drill has limitations. For one, students and faculty know about the exercise in advance to prevent unnecessary panic, Ms. Washington said. But teachers explain that a real-life emergency could call for extreme measures, she said.
“I told them that we’re not diving out of windows and stuff in the drill, but obviously in an emergency situation, that’s an option,” she said.
All principals and teachers in the district have received the training, which directs them to make snap decisions based on their surroundings and the information they have available. Depending on the situation, that could mean locking a classroom door and hiding, or evacuating the building altogether, Ms. Pugh said.
Middle- and high-school students began training only recently. The district is still working to find the best way to train at the elementary level, she said. The district hopes to have all students trained by spring 2019, she said.
Ms. Washington said her students are eager to learn how to respond in an active shooter situation — a seriousness that other emergency drills seem to just fail to inspire. “They seem hungry for it,” she said.
The drill lasted less roughly six minutes, about the length of time officials estimate it would take police and emergency crews to arrive.
They hope they never have to find out.
Matt McKinney: mmckinney@post-gazette.com
First Published: March 23, 2018, 2:56 p.m.
Updated: March 23, 2018, 6:23 p.m.
