I believe the world has gone absolutely, totally off its Effingham rocker. Today at my workplace which is on the 7th floor of the tallest building in downtown St. Louis we had an active shooter drill. I understand why the company may have felt the need to do this in today’s environment. Plus I believe that since one of our primary activities is public transportation, they felt like we might be especially liable to such incidents. I don’t know maybe.
The way they handled this was to have small meetings before appraising of us of the fact that we were going to have the drill. They then went over what our responses should be. Basically it was a fire drill type of situation. If you can you are supposed to flee. In a non drill situation, if you could not flee then you need to hide. If you cannot hide then, and only then, do you fight with whatever is at hand.
They posted signs at all entrances Monday morning informing us there would the drill this week. For drill they had St. Louis police there, paramedics, and counselors were to be available afterwards if anyone felt the need for one.
The “active shooter” was to be accompanied by an employee in a safety vest with the word “Observer” stenciled on it. The thought being if some forgot it was a drill they would not attack the shooter.
It just so happened that the “shooter” was in our area. He fired off several blanks. In an office space they were very loud. I was deep inside the code of a program with my earphones on. The first shot startled the be-jeebers out of me. By the second shot I knew what it was. I grabbed my coat and phone (would I do that in a real situation??) and headed to the nearest stairs to go down to the ground seven flights. For all such drills we have a rendezvous site a few blocks away from the building.
I do not know if the company considers it successful or not. There were two injuries. One lady tripped leaving our floor and harmed her lower leg somewhat. The second injury was another lady who tripped just outside the building and did a face plant into the concrete sidewalk. I think her injuries were a little more serious.
One of my co-workers was a teenager in the Bosnia/Serbia area when the war and genocidal killings were going on. She was less than thrilled with gun fire in the office. It brings back too many bad memories for her.
Why it pisses me off so much is that companies feel the need to have such drills, yet we as a society will not pass any meaningful gun regulation. Even after all the mass shooting atrocities in 2017 and the years before that. We have a national sickness when it comes to guns. We have a Congress that is more afraid of the crazies at the NRA than voters. When will sanity return? I do not believe I will live long enough to see it.
I am so sad.
So it goes.