After the recent mass shooting in Buffalo, which since has been eclipsed by an even deadlier gun slaughter in Uvalde, Texas, a Columbus official wondered aloud. What once was unthinkable is now top of mind.
As The Republic’s Jana Wiersema reported from a May 17 meeting, which took place before the Uvalde massacre that killed 19 schoolchildren and two teachers, Columbus Board of Works member John Pickett asked other officials, “When you see these horrible acts that are happening in the country — like Buffalo, for instance — does the city have plans in place for those kind of incidents, like how to respond? … Or are we at that point where we need to think about it?”
The answer to both questions is yes, according to city officials. Yes, in as much as anyone can ever prepare for violent acts of insanity.
And in as much as we can take comfort in preparations for potential carnage, the responses to the question from Bartholomew County Emergency Management Director Shannan Cooke, Columbus Director of Administration and Community Development Mary Ferdon and Columbus Fire Department Chief Andy Lay were reassuring.
First, emergency responders would rely on standard operating procedures. Local agencies have planned for such grim scenarios. Lay said CFD also is hoping to get a training grant that would help develop a unified command structure that could be implemented in a crisis. That, he said, would be a plan for “how to bring everybody together when we have these disasters. What’s the fire department’s role? What’s the city administration, the county, and bringing all those people in to know their roles so you can plan for that. And usually if you have a good incident management system in place, everything kind of falls into place.”
Ferdon explained that local responders work out “tabletop” scenarios to plan responses to multiple situations, such as flooding and other emergency situations. Given the gravity of the recent Buffalo and Uvalde mass shootings, we expect law enforcement and emergency responders here are taking a hard look at similar scenarios.
We are blessed with professional and dedicated public servants in our emergency services, and we have confidence in their leadership. More importantly, we know their collective respect for duty and willingness to provide mutual aid and assistance to serve and safeguard the public is a community treasure. We’ve seen it repeatedly, and that dedication is perhaps the most important quality we could ask for in our emergency responders.
Still, every one of the hundreds of mass killings in recent years has come with lessons in the aftermath. At this stage, the response to the Uvalde killings is shaping up to be a fiasco of epic proportions.
Yet the shortcomings we are learning about can serve as a catalyst for law enforcement and emergency responders to revisit their standard operating procedures and make sure that when the unthinkable happens, everyone is on the same page throughout the ranks of all responding departments.
