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The Local Emergency Planning Committee of Socorro County voted to create an active shooter drill committee that would include representatives from Socorro schools, the hospital, local law enforcement, fire departments and other stakeholders.
“As we’ve talked about a couple of other times in this forum, in this committee, is to start to work towards an active shooter drill. I think that any community, any school, in particular in the nation, is vulnerable, I think that we probably have a higher degree of vulnerability in our community,” Jason Everett said at the meeting last week.
He said at the previous meeting, the Socorro School district reported on their reunification drill. After their presentation, the committee discussed adding a second committee that would focus exclusively on the development of an active shooter drill.
“The idea is that we will actually have an active shooter drill with an actor as a perpetrator, with actors as students, some who will be injured, some who will need to be relocated and evacuated,” Everett said “The police would have to secure the scene, neutralize the perpetrator. The fire department is going to come in and triage and transport. General Hospital will activate their emergency action plan, and then the schools can do the reunification.”
He suggested engaging New Mexico Tech drama students to help as actors to avoid traumatizing high school students.
“That’s kind of the vision I have, but that’s just my vision. This vision would obviously need to be developed and embraced by all the stakeholders,” Everett said.
The formation of a committee was unanimously voted for.
In other business, Gail Tripp gave a tour of the new building, which was secured as the Emergency Management Office. She said the former Solaro buildings were on five acres, and the vision included stabilizing the current resources and equipment. She said there is additional land around the building that could be used for more buildings to support the county’s needs, such as the sheriff’s department and animal control.
She confirmed the Emergency Operations Center would remain at the annex.
“Our ham radio room is down there. All the antennas are down there, and honestly, I don’t think it would function well up here. We have some serious winds come through midafternoon here, about two o’clock, and I think that would really mess up our readers. So we’ll keep it down there, where we have a little more control,” Tripp said.
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She also reported that since the previous fire marshal stepped down she is serving as the acting fire marshal.
“I’m going to focus on what time I do have to get a training schedule in place for next year and make sure that any of the resources that were requested get signed off on an order process, and that way we don’t have anything hanging out there that the fire districts are lacking. If you guys have questions for the fire marshal, I will answer them to the best of my ability.” Tripp said.
The next LEPC meeting will be held on October 17 at 10 a.m. at Annex II on 1404 Enterprise Road in Socorro. It will be followed by the school shooter drill committee meeting at 11 a.m. at the same location.
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