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First Responders Practice Crisis Response

The 'crisis' originally began as an active shooter situation that was called in by security officials.

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(TNS) - A mall shooting, a fire, a hostage situation and a dirty bomb.

Those were the crises that were dealt with as a part of a training exercise held at the vacant Kittery Trading Post X-Sports building for police in Kittery, Eliot and York, along with the Kittery Fire Department, the York County Special Response Team (SRT), American Ambulance service and York County Emergency Management. The exercise was designed to test the town's ability to respond to a multi-faceted emergency that would require multiple agencies and cooperation, according to Kittery Police Chief James Soucy.

"The exercise was based upon Kittery Premium Outlets working in collaboration with police, fire and EMS and essentially what they needed was to see what kind of response would come from the outlets if something should happen here or nearby," Soucy said.

The "crisis" originally began as an active shooter situation that was called in by Kittery Outlet security officials. Shortly after the report came in, several Kittery police officers descended upon the building to find the shooter, while others set up a perimeter.

"We got called to test our response and based upon the information we receive from dispatch, who are we going to send? One guy, two guys?" said Soucy. "After the initial event, there will be more of a response from additional agencies because we can't handle it all ourselves. We're going to see how all our personnel is working together and what kind of kinks are in the work."

The officers rescued several bystanders who had sustained non-life threatening injuries but two required "medical evacuations," and apprehended the "shooter." When the practice shooter was questioned, he reportedly revealed there was another "shooter" in the building.

Around this time a "fire" broke out in one section of the building, which complicated the matter because firefighters could not be sent in to fight the fire because of the reported shooter, so the York County SRT was called in on mine-resistant, military-grade, MRAP vehicles.

Once the SRT located the second shooter, they revealed that he had taken "hostages," which required a negotiator. The next phase saw SRT and the firefighters striking a delicate balance between prolonging the negotiation as long as possible to try to win the release of as many hostages without going in, while firefighters were simultaneously battling an ongoing fire.

After two hostages were released, the SRT team determined the lives of the rest of the hostages were at risk from the fire, and opted to move in. The second "shooter" was taken "alive" and the rest of hostages were rescued.

After the dust settled authorities discovered there was a dirty bomb hidden in a parked truck, which had to be defused. A dirty bomb is a improvised bomb made with a small amount of radioactive material and, if detonated, would cause mass disruption, large-scale radiation poisoning and would make for a long and costly cleanup, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"This is a good way of keeping our swords sharp," said Eliot Police Chief Elliott Moya. "We were here to back up, which is kind of the case with Eliot and Kittery on a day to day basis. We work together so well from traffic crashes to traffic stops. In the middle of the night these guys back us up and we do the same. This is just a larger scale drill for us."

Soucy said the exercise went as planned and they discovered a handful of ways in which everyone involved can improve, but he admitted it is near impossible to replicate how a similar situation may play out in real life.

"We gathered some areas of weakness that we can work on, but clearly overwhelming positive response from everyone here. I think it was a well-coordinated exercise. It's difficult to get these things tweaked the way you want them and to have them unfold in an exercise scenario because you know it's an exercise and everybody playing their roles knows this is an exercise," said Soucy. "You don't have that element of surprise, you can practice and train all you want but when you're missing that element of surprise and that fight or flight response is where all your training really kicks in."

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©2017 Portsmouth Herald, N.H.

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