News

Jun 09, 2023

Emergency crews perform drill to test response to school shooting

By Marie Saavedra August 4, 2023 / 4:18 PM / CBS Chicago CHICAGO (CBS) -- Thousands of phones in the western suburbs received an emergency alert just after 8 a.m. Friday, as part of a large-scale

By Marie Saavedra

August 4, 2023 / 4:18 PM / CBS Chicago

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Thousands of phones in the western suburbs received an emergency alert just after 8 a.m. Friday, as part of a large-scale safety drill in Addison.

The exercise pulled resources from dozens of departments, different cities, and agencies to create organized chaos in an effort to ready them for the worst.

At Ardmore Elementary School in Addison, the people with bloody wounds were acting, and their injuries were just makeup; all a test for school staff and first responders should a shooting happen at the school.

"It's sad, I think, that we have to practice this with our staff and our students, but it's so incredibly important," said Dr. Kim Lohse, who oversees security for Addison School District 4.

Her morning started with a gym full of teenagers and adults who've given up their summer on Friday to work out the kinks in their updated safety plan. First up was testing the flow of information between the school and law enforcement who'd be rushing in to help.

"The unified command structure was most critical, because we knew that during an incident like this, we would have many injured, or kids that were missing, and so we needed to have a way of flowing communication from police and fire to the school," Lohse said.

Second, Addison used what's called the BluePoint System for the first time. Blue boxes that look like fire alarms are programmed to notify everyone from school staff to 911 when the box on the handle is pulled, without the need to make multiple panicked phone calls.

"The police can self-dispatch, fire gets a notification; they can start prepping their ambulances and rescue task force, as well as our school district, that there's a problem in the building," Loshe said.

Those minutes saved could save a life.

"I think it's going great, but one of the reasons we do this drill is to try to find out what we can improve on," Addison deputy police chief Roy Selvik said of Friday's drill.

Selvik said the exercise should be a message to families that these communities are taking protecting their neighbors incredibly seriously.

"A large percentage of our role players in this are parents in the community. So we wanted to give them a firsthand take at how this operates, and some tools they can take back to their own kids," he said.

You can never be ready for the worst, but these communities will be more prepared for the real thing after Friday's drill.

The neighborhood around the school was back to normal on Friday, as the next phase of this drill starts. Officials will comb through response times and any other hurdles that might have popped up to find solutions for the future.

Marie Saavedra joined the CBS2 Chicago news team in October 2020 as an anchor. She grew up in Evanston and is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism.

First published on August 4, 2023 / 4:18 PM

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