MEMA puts on active shooter drill

An active shooter drill took place at Quitman Junior High School earlier today to give multiple law enforcement organizations and first responders a chance to work together to practice preparedness in the event that there is a school shooting.

“Our concept on this is, is the fact that you sweat today so that you don’t bleed tomorrow. Some people say that might be a glib comment in light of today’s culture that we live in with gun violence, but what we have to do is we will sweat today and will make sure we are doing the things we have to do to adequately prepare. We hope it never happens, but if it does, we’re going to be prepared to take action, to take care of the shooter, and to save as many lives as possible.” -Joseph Dunlap, PIO for Wayne County

MEMA puts on these drills, which allows different regions to work together. Adult volunteers stand in for what would be the students, and they don’t tell the volunteers much information so that first responders can be better prepared for any situation.

“We don’t use children for this because it’s very traumatic with guns going off and those kinds of things, but in a situation when children are at school, we hope that we can educate through adults to the children what we’re trying to do. These schools are very hard to secure, but we’re doing our very best, and we’re going to keep doing our very best to make these schools as safe as possible. The question is, that it just takes a lot of dollars to secure rural school, and it’s dollars we don’t have.” -Dunlap