It’s only a drill.
Henry County, Iowa Emergency Management director Walt Jackson and the Henry County Sheriff’s Department will host the drill at 4 p.m. Thursday, using blank rounds in real guns to simulate the sounds of a shooting incident.
“We want to give employees here more tools in their tool bags if something like this happened,” Jackson said.
While Jackson is planning a full scale, Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate style training session next year that will involve a gunman on the loose, Thursday’s drill will be strictly about identifying gunfire.
“Firing a gun in the woods and firing a gun inside a building — the acoustics are totally different. We want the employees to hear what it sounds like,” Jackson said.
Three guns — a pistol, long rifle and shotgun — will be fired several times throughout the drill. All civilians will be asked to leave the courthouse by 4 p.m., and county and city workers will gather around to hear what each gun sounds like up close. They then will spread to their offices around the upper and lower floors of the building, and the guns will be shot at random locations within the building. Employees will be encouraged to hunker down during the exercise.
“We don’t want anyone sticking their head out,” Jackson said.
Once the shooting is done, the workers will be quizzed on what they heard.
“We’ll ask, ‘Can you tell me if the shot came from the first floor?’ With our rotunda and the acoustics the way they are, it may sound like it’s coming from right outside their office,” Jackson said.
That’s no exaggeration. Jackson said the cries of a baby on the first floor are just as loud on the third floor, thanks to the unique acoustics carrying sound up through the rotunda. Gunshots are louder than a crying baby.
“We don’t even know what it’s going to sound like. It’s going to be a learning experience for us,” Jackson said.
That isn’t the only training planned for next week. Scout helicopters from Waterloo will land in Mount Pleasant Wednesday, the day before the courthouse training, for training sessions designed for first responders.
“They’ll be doing search and rescue training,” Jackson said.
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