By Jack Minch
The Sentinel & Enterprise
LANCASTER, Mass. — It all looked so real when Sgt. Ed Burgwinkel ordered a gunman to raise his arms and drop to the floor in a corridor at Mary Rowlandson Elementary School Saturday morning.
There were three victims lying in the corridor and the shooter was standing over them.
But it was a mock training exercise and nobody was hurt.
It was the largest inter-agency training exercise in the town’s history, drawn up by officer Martin Gannon, said Police Chief Kevin D. Lamb.
Police, firefighters, communications dispatchers and members of Emergency Management Services practiced over and over what to do if hostages were taken at the elementary school, or Luther Burbank Middle School.
The Worcester County Sheriff’s Office provided a mobile command center for the exercise.
The scenarios would also work in other municipal buildings, Lamb said.
All the departments know how to do their jobs so the important element of Saturday’s exercise was learning to perform them together, Lamb said.
“Everybody is on a different (radio) channel, everybody has different terminology; communication is the key to everything,” he said.
During the final scenario of the morning, Burgwinkel and officer John T. McNally stormed into the hall as the first officers on scene.
They ordered the shooter, played by Bolton officer Jason Purri, to get on the ground and then assessed the injuries to the victims and waited for help.
Four rescue teams escorted by police, were led down the corridor by officers including Douglas DeCesare with a riot shield and Jose Miletti, who soon rushed to the victims’ aid and pulled them to safety.
Then it was time for another debriefing.
“We accomplished an awful lot today,” Gannon said. “We have found and corrected problems with communications, accountability and command-in-control. ... We found we have more resource available to us through the command post from the Worcester County Sheriff.”
The exercise helped the communications department which got to see things dispatchers would normally only hear over the radio, said Kathleen Pierce, head of the department.
“It’s a training tool for us and helps us visualize how this all goes into play,” she said.
Dispatchers used the exercise to develop a familiarity with the incident command post they will man in an emergency, Pierce said.
The mobile command center helps the departments mesh their radio systems so they work on the same frequency, said Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Bill Walker.
“This is all tightly controlled by the aid of the computer on the truck through the direction of the incident commander,” Walker said. “Just having the truck physically on hand provides a climate-controlled environment for the incident command staff to set up.”
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