Drill helps Roanoke County responders learn to work together

The first reports were frightening: A dark-colored sedan had collided with a school bus crowded with children. The car was on fire. Suddenly, someone was shooting. The gunman had hostages. An officer was down.

Get as many ambulances here as possible, an officer radioed to an emergency dispatcher. Notify the area media that the area is dangerous and off limits.

On the day after the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11 , 2001, terrorist attacks, Roanoke County held a training exercise involving its major emergency and law enforcement agencies. Salem police also participated.

Nearby, Roanoke County police Chief Howard Hall watched his officers and other emergency workers respond.

“This goes beyond the classroom setting,” he said. “Is it the same as the real thing? No. But it’s about as close as we can get.”

Dozens of rescue workers, firefighters, police officers, sheriff’s deputies, 911 dispatchers and other emergency responders participated in the training, which had been in the works for at least six months, Hall said.

The exercise was realistic. Held at the Roanoke Valley Regional Fire and EMS Training Center in Salem, it included a mock car that was actually set ablaze, role players with makeup simulating real gunshot wounds, and a police officer playing the part of a hostage-taker who used blank rounds in his gun.

Other police officers who participated used their real weapons, too, but their guns were secured with red straps through the chambers to make sure they weren’t loaded.

“It does notch the stress level up,” Hall said.

Though Hall said Thursday’s training coming the day after Sept. 11 was a scheduling coincidence, the anniversary highlighted the importance of multiple agencies working together at one catastrophic event.

The chief cited the July standoff on Orlando Avenue, in which police, rescue workers, deputies and others had to converge to peacefully draw out a man suspected of taking two hostages.

“The big thing from our standpoint is actually the personnel — the responders — working together and getting to know each other,” said Roanoke County Fire & Rescue Division Chief Dustin Campbell.

Communicating with fellow responders was a focus of the training, something fire and rescue Capt. Danny Irvin said has improved in recent years.

“We’ve tackled some problems we’ve had in the past about uncommon terminology,” he said. “I think we’re well on the way, heads and shoulders above some of our surrounding localities.”

Emily Totten, the county dispatch center’s lead communications officer, said she appreciated being included in the training. It reminds responders in the field that dispatchers need to know what’s going on, too, she said.

“Our job is to paint them a picture so they know what they’re going into, but we don’t always get that in return,” Totten said. “If we have a visual image, it makes it easier to determine what they’re doing.”

Training exercises like Thursday’s, she said, are key.

“We’ve got to work together now when there is no life on the line, so when there is, we’re ready.”

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