By Brian Arola
The Free Press
MANKATO, Minn. — A training exercise Wednesday started with a report of an active shooter in Mankato, spurring multiple agencies into action to test their preparedness.
Thirteen agencies ranging from law enforcement to fire departments to ambulance services partnered on the event starting at Minnesota State University. Mayo Clinic Health System held a related training involving taking in volunteer victims arriving from campus.
Training for large-scale incidents like this is an “absolute need,” said Mankato Department of Public Safety Commander Chris Baukol, as it simulates the teamwork needed to respond to emergencies.
“Hopefully this is all for nothing and we never have to respond to something like this,” he said. “But if there is an incident hopefully we’ve worked out as many kinks as possible on the front end.”
Wednesday’s exercise involved two active shooters in Morris Hall. Mankato police officers were first tasked with locating and neutralizing the shooters.
As they did this, mutual aid from Blue Earth County Sheriff’s Office, North Mankato police and Lake Crystal police arrived to help. Mankato, North Mankato, South Bend and St. Peter firefighters transported victims to Mayo Clinic Health System and Allina ambulances.
MSU rounded up volunteers to serve as gunshot victims. As one faux-bloodied volunteer was being carried away from Morris Hall, they told an emergency responder how the suspect pushed her out of the way to shoot her friend.
There were about 30 victims involved in the scenario, Baukol said. Planning an event of this scale involving many victims and dozens upon dozens of personnel takes months.
“That does take a lot of coordination to be able to do this, but it’s worth it in the end,” he said.
Afterward, the agencies perform a debrief going over areas of improvement and strengths. Evaluators representing each of the disciplines involved — police, fire, emergency medical services and hospital — provide observations to them.
Communication officers from agencies also discuss their role and how information would’ve been relayed to the public.
From Eric Weller’s experience with emergency trainings over the years, the top opportunities for improvement are communication between departments. Weller currently serves as Blue Earth County’s emergency manager and has about 15 years of experience as a certified emergency manager overall.
“We can do training in a classroom, but this really puts the end result of the exercise and puts all the pieces together with a realistic scenario,” he said.
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