THIS Is Why You ALWAYS Notify the Police of Drills...

The folks at AT&T learned an important lesson last week: if you're going to hold an emergency preparedness drill, you should "reach out and touch someone" by notifying the local emergency responders, AND your employees. AT&T didn't think of that little aspect... and caused all sorts of holy hell in the Windy City. According to AT&T officials, they were holding "video training" to familiarize key employees with the facility's active shooter response plan. One aspect of the plan involved a facility-wide text message advising staff of the attack. Since they hadn't thought to notify staff, or include the standard "THIS IS A DRILL, DO NOT RESPOND OR TAKE ANY ACTION" verbiage in their broadcast message, many employees took the notification to be legitimate, resulting in panicked calls to police, fire, EMS, news media, loved ones, and so on.


https://blockclubchicago.org/2019/07/18/active-shooter-drill-in-loop-goes-epically-wrong-after-police-workers-not-notified-in-advance/

https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/07/18/active-shooter-drill-gone-wrong/

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-police-active-shooter-false-alarm-loop-512904561.html

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-loop-active-shooter-drill-20190718-menvndwqlnfutmfjuvztk3i5yq-story.html

Drills and exercises are an essential part of an organization's emergency preparedness posture. They allow participants to act out their responses -- hopefully appropriate responses -- to simulated emergency situations. An example we're all familiar with is fire drills in school (not that you should take the time to line up in size place and hold your partner's hand...). Those of us "of an age" will remember the old "duck and cover" drills of the Cold War era, as if a school desk would protect us from a nuclear detonation.

There are two broad categories of exercises: discussion-based and operations-based forming a continuum from the easiest to arrange and hold -- the seminar -- the the most complex -- the full-scale exercise. Ideally, an organization intent on practicing or improving its preparedness efforts would go through the steps in order, allowing them to catch and correct problems earlier in the process, when fixes aren't as complicated (or expensive) to achieve. It also allows the organization's staff to become used to the process. The idea is that by practicing these responses, should the event actually occur, staff will have "experienced" the situation often enough to not panic.

Unfortunately, America generally does not begin planning for a disaster until after the disaster has occurred. Shortly after 9-11, Bush administration officials said "no one had considered the possibility of intentionally crashing planes into buildings," despite the fact that merely 60 years earlier, the Japanese had done almost the same thing, with their kamikaze pilots intentionally flying their aircraft into Allied vessels in the Pacific. Plus, Tom Clancy's 1994 novel, Debt of Honor, ended with a Japanese pilot intentionally crashing his 747 into the Capitol Building during the State of the Union address... a full seven years before 9-11. And it was already proven that planes collided with buildings: in 1945, a B-25 bomber, enveloped in dense fog, crashed into the Empire State Building in New York City.

Rick Rescorla, whom I have mentioned before, was British-born, and had experience in both the British and United States military, plus police experience in Rhodesia and London, before becoming director of security for Morgan Stanley. After the destruction of Pan Am Flight 93 over Lockerbee, Scotland, in 1988, Rescorla became interested in terrorism, and asked a friend with extensive training in the field to examine the (then) Dean Witter offices at the World Trade Center. The friend said the most likely spot for a terrorist attack was in the basement of the building, in the parking garage. Five years later, Islamic fundamentalists parked a truck full of explosives next to a main bearing column and detonated it.

After the botched response to the 1993 WTC attack, Rescorla decided to institute a series of regular evacuation drills, feeling that lost productivity and lost income was far less important than ensuring the safety of the Morgan Stanley employees. Of the 3,700 Morgan Stanley employees at WTC on 9-11, only six perished: Rescorla and five other security staff who were helping other tenants escape.

His recurring drills were key to the Morgan Stanley staff keeping their wits about them as they evacuated, despite announcements from the Port Authority that the buildings were safe and no evacuation was necessary.

Drills work, but they have to be accomplished appropriately.