Multiple agencies participated in a crisis management training at a Lexington County high school last month with an emphasis on special-needs students.

On July 11,  multiple agencies including Lexington County School District 1, the state Law Enforcement Division, Pelion and Lexington police departments, along Lexington County’s  sheriff, fire and EMS departments participated in the training held at River Bluff High School, which focused on active shooter scenarios.

“These types of training are crucial in helping keep students and staff safe at school,” said Libby Roof, chief communications officer for Lexington 1, which oversees the school. “The training allowed local emergency response agencies and Lexington 1 to help prepare for and understand how to respond during a crisis event at a school.”

Roof said that River Bluff was chosen due to the size of its campus along with its centralized location for the agencies involved. She added that Lexington 1 will continue to work with local agencies to conduct exercises like this as it will improve the district's response to crisis situations.

According to Renée Wunderlick, director of public information for SLED, the training included identifying and securing an active threat, in this case a school shooter, and quickly getting students, faculty and staff to safety.

Wunderlick told the Chronicle that this was the first SLED training to put a focus on special needs students, saying that role players interacted with law enforcement first responders to present challenges that they may experience with a special-needs classroom.

“Training participants showed professional resilience and gentle personal interactions with the students in a simulated time of crisis,” she said.

According to Wunderlick this training exercise forced responders to consider their interactions with special needs students as well as caregivers and teachers. Responders had to address the evacuation challenges faced by those with special-needs which include but are not limited to physical mobility.

Wunderlick added that first responders had to address the needs of potential victims around the school through a medical evacuation scenario and that the exercise simulated the physical challenges of getting injured victims to safety and securing medical transportation.

She said there were also mental challenges presented in the form of inter-agency communication throughout a dangerous event.

During the scenarios, different trainers from SLED instructed both law enforcement and emergency medical staff on how to treat potential injuries.

Sgt. Cameron Morentson, public information officer for the Lexington Police Department, described the training as a chance to be proactive in preparing for potential emergencies.

“We certainly can't just sit around and hope that we never have a critical incident where that happens, so even though we wish that it would never happen, we've got to train for it,” he said. “Not only does this give us some familiarity of how to handle situations like this. “It also highlights training needs, it highlights things that we could do better at, it highlights equipment that didn't work, highlights what to purchase and highlights ways that we can collaborate or we have a better understanding.”

Mortenson told the Chronicle that the experience was unusual and very great for the department, explaining that they don’t always get the opportunity to train with fire services, EMS or other law enforcement agencies.

“There's that understanding that ultimately it gives our community confidence in our local law enforcement and first responders,” he said, “but then also, it gives the confidence amongst us that are working together, that if something happens, we know what we're going to do working together.”

Pelion Police Chief John Rebolj echoed Mortenson’s sentiment.

“This exercise was pivotal in testing the department's abilities to keep our children safe and coordinate a large-scale event response,” he said. “I was exceedingly impressed with the abilities of our officers and the personnel at our partner agencies. Everyone's response was top-notch and we are blessed to have such dedicated professionals in our community."

Mortenson said going into the training, Lexington officers were unaware of what to expect, adding that not knowing made the training more real.

“A lot of the work that we do as first responders, whether it's collisions or critical incident response or even day-to-day calls, you're put in a lot of situations and scenarios in real life that you can't always [know what to] expect,” he said.