Tips To Ensure Safety During An Active Shooter Situation

Photo by Quay DeVoll

ZANESVILLE, Ohio-What’s the procedure when there’s an active shooter?

Investigator for Muskingum County Prosecutor’s Office Bethany Hayes stopped by the noon Rotary Club to address exactly what steps you should take to ensure your safety.

“We go through the ALICE concept alert, lock down, inform, counter, and evacuate,” Hayes said. “We tell them what to do for each step in the concepts. Alert:set off any kind of message, that we can to let people know and advise people that we have an active killer on the premises or near the premises. Lock down: we show them how to barricade doors, how to break windows, how to properly evacuate out of a window. Information: we just talk about what it is that we need to tell everybody, what we need to tell law enforcement, dispatchers responding to the scene, what we need to tell people inside the building where it’s occurring. Counter: how to counter somebody properly, what to do with a hand gun or fire arm. And how to evacuate out.”

Hayes said being proactive and practicing active shooter situations are vital to knowing how to respond when faced with that situation.

“We do have to practice this. If we don’t educate our own employees or our students how are they are going to have a proper respond? It’s not different than a fire drill or a teaching a kid stranger danger,” Hayes said.

Hayes said it’s important to teach people what do to before something happened instead of trying to react after it’s happen.