This Is a Drill

Learn by Going through the Motions

This article is based on the Safety Member Certification training modules. [1]

From the Bible

“… These ought ye to have done [or practiced], and not to leave the other undone” (Matthew 23:24b).

Introduction

Lights in the plant blink, followed by a PA announcement: "When the alarm sounds, follow your group leader to your assigned tornado shelter. This is a drill. Repeat: this is a drill." About four minutes later loud horns blare while strobe lights flash. Workers lay down their tools and file to the nearest tornado safe rooms where they await the "all clear" announcement.

"To practice" basically means "to do." Therefore, it has come to mean learning by doing, rehearsing the learned activity. In military training, a practice session is called a drill. Soldiers have periodic drills to keep their knowledge and skills fresh.

In a church safety ministry, the team has drills for teaching and for keeping skills fresh. There are also drills for the whole church, such as fire drills, tornado drills, and lockdown drills. According to "Safety Team Fundamentals, the Safety Director "conducts practice drills."

On the Web

* Drills can prepare safety teams, church staff, and congregational members for the kinds of incidents in these articles and news stories:

Adventist Risk Management, Inc. - Several drills are recommended by Adventist Risk Management, which also publishes directions for them. This includes a missing child drill, an exercise which is unfamiliar to most churches.[2]

Macomb County, Michigan, November 8, 2023 - The Kensington Church in Macomb County was the scene of an active shooter drill. This involved not only the church's security team, but also local emergency services.[3]

ShakeOut, October 17, 2024 - October 17, 2024 is ShakeOut Day, a worldwide earthquake drill. It will be held at 10:17 a.m. local time Many churches will participate in this exercise, especially in California.[4]

Kansas and Missouri, March 6, 2024 - Kansas and Missouri held statewide tornado drills on March 6.[5]

Little Rock, Arkansas, November 5, 2023 - A church in Little Rock held an active shooter drill on a Sunday. Involving the entire congregation, it was led by a city police officer. The purpose was to train the congregants in responses to a number of situations.[6]

Bridgeport, Connecticut, June 4, 2024 - A medical center held a hazmat drill with the aim of protecting staff and patients while also treating victims of a hazmat incident.[7]

Matteson, Illinois, June 27, 2024 - A derailment in the center of town caused a tank car leak. As a precaution, residents and business within an area around the scene were ordered to evacuate.[8]

Why Are We Drilling?

There are several emergencies which call for prompt and proper response. The primary benefits of drills are:

1. They condition us to respond to the situation immediately.
2. They ingrain in us the right responses.
3. They instill confidence in us.

We need different drills for different situations. Take for instance an active killer incident. The response will differ by who and where you are. If you are in a classroom, you will either evacuate or (more likely) lock down. If you are in the sanctuary, get out if you can. Practice swarming the shooter if you can't escape or lock down. Members of the safety team will contain or engage the killer. The medical response team will be ready to treat any casualties. How should you act when police arrive?

Speaking about medical response, team members need to drill on recognizing medical emergencies, such as a heart attack or anaphylaxis. For a mass casualty event, they should also practice triage, treating chest wounds, and coordinating with other responders.

If there's a fire, the congregation will evacuate, but if it's a tornado, they will head to an inside shelter. For an earthquake, it is duck and cover, then evacuate after the shaking stops.

The response for a missing child will be very different. For prevention, have childcare workers practice the check-in and check-out procedure.

Some drills are for routine activities to get all the safety team members on board. When someone different has to fill in on the cash offering escort, they should already know how to do it. If your church has more than one morning service, one safety team member will relieve another. Practice the briefing/debriefing at hand-off. For patrols, maybe a restroom camera search practice with planted "cameras" to find.

Some skills, such as verbal de-escalation, need to be acted out and evaluated. These drills need coaches.

Timing of Drills

Obviously, it would be a big challenge to run all the drills back-to-back, unless it is boot camp. Not all drills are equally intensive or time-consuming. Some will be much shorter. Recommended each year are a fire drill, a tornado or earthquake drill (depending on your location), and an active shooter drill. These are the ones involving the most persons. Some drills are included with training, such as verbal de-escalation and safety team routines. These will have only a few persons at a time, so there may be several of each drill during the year.

Planning a Drill

Drills don't just happen. They must be planned. Here are some drills:

Fire Drill

A fire drill needs to be orderly.

1. Review or plot the evacuation route from each location in the church. Two key factors are, (1) how far the exit is from a location, and (2) how many people will be using that route and exit. You don't want the designated exit to be too far, and you don't want too many people crowding the same route and exit.
2. Then plan for alternative routes depending on where the fire is located. The fire may block the primary route to a certain exit.
3. Print and post evacuation maps showing the routes and exits, with each location's route highlighted on its copy.
4. Schedule the fire drill for the intended participants. If the drill is to be during a Sunday morning service and your church has multiple services, you might have one for each service. That way each service time will have members who have been in a drill.
1. If the drill is for children, then have it during Sunday School.
2. If your church has a weekday daycare or preschool, then have a fire drill during the week.
5. Have a pre-drill for safety team members and church staff and leaders (including ushers). They will be assisting and leading during the congregational drill. Ushers will direct people in sections of the sanctuary to their respective exits.
6. Include head counts at the reunification areas. During an actual fire you want to be sure everyone has made it out safely.
7. Analyze how the drill went so needed adjustments can be made in the procedure. It will help to have members of the fire department present as well as helping in the planning.

Tornado Drill

Plans for a fire drill will be similar to those for other evacuations, but the plans for a tornado drill will instead take attendees to a tornado shelter (or shelters) inside the church. Obviously, the routes will be different. In a multiple-building campus, the ideal is to have a shelter for each building. The best location is an interior space on the lowest level. This may be a basement hallway or an underground room. It will have a short ceiling span and be away from windows. It will also have a door that opens in so it can be opened even if there is debris against it.

Earthquake Drill

Earthquake drills are advised for quake-prone areas. Besides west of the Rockies and in Alaska, this also includes the New Madrid Seismic Zone along the Mississippi River, which has the potential of massive earthquakes such as those in 1811 and 1812:

"Earthquakes that occur in the New Madrid Seismic Zone potentially threaten parts of seven American states: Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and to a lesser extent Mississippi and Indiana,"[9]

In an earthquake drill, practice Drop down, Cover, and Hold on. An Adventist Risk Management article has a description of this:

1. Drop to the floor or as close as you can get.
2. Cover yourself, especially your head and neck. Preferably this is a table or pew. (If you can't get under something, cover your head and neck with your arms.)
3. Hold on to what's covering you.
4. When the shaking has stopped, calmly go outside to a planned meeting area.

During the drill, a leader calls out the quake and when it has stopped.[10]

Obviously, pews would be safer than chairs during a quake.

Hazmat Drills

In the Matteson train derailment, there was the possibility of a hazardous material incident, which thankfully did not materialize.[8] However, more than a year before, a derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, resulted in a major hazmat situation.[11] If it had happened on a Sunday morning when people were in church services, it would have been shelter-in-place for four to six churches. For those farther out, it would have been an evacuation of the area. A drill for a church in an at-risk location would be first for shelter-in-place, then for evacuation.

Shelter-in-Place. First, have needed materials already at hand for sealing doors, windows, and vents from inside the church. Practice having everyone go to a meeting area with restroom access. Turn off all heating or air conditioning. Meanwhile, the sealing crew is sealing all entrances to the church - windows, doors, vents. Lastly, they seal the designated meeting room with the restrooms from the rest of the church. Since this is a drill, use token sealing tape so the materials can be saved for the real event if it occurs.

Hazmat Evacuation. Practice an orderly evacuation of the church. Everyone goes to the parking lot and gets into their vehicles. If this was an actual hazmat, they would drive off after assuring that everyone was out.

Follow the dual drill with a church dinner or other fellowship activity. This makes the drill something to look forward to and is a reward for participation.

Missing Child Drill

If a child in the church is missing, what will you do? Adventist Risk Management (ARM) has a detailed guide to searching for a missing child and how to plan and conduct a drill.[2] This begins with how to conduct the search itself, which includes identifying potential hiding places. Going on from there, plot a grid pattern for the search, which will start from where the child was last known to be.

The drill itself will have a child actually hiding somewhere on the church campus (with the parents' knowledge and cooperation). Announced a week or two before, the drill itself should not create panic, a "War of the Worlds" reaction. If a visitor or someone who missed the announcement begins to panic, a member nearby could tell them it's a drill. ARM suggests having a different starting point for each time the drill is held.

Mass Trauma Drills

These are held to prepare for scenarios which may result in multiple serious injuries. Participants practice triage, treatment of injuries, and treatment of triggered medical conditions. These scenarios may be caused by violence, explosions, accidents, severe weather, various disasters, etc. The drills may include searches for victims and debris removal to free them.

Procedure Drills

The Church Safety Team needs to practice routine procedures. Most of these, like de-escalation, will be by role playing. This can be with the entire team.

A repeatable impromptu drill is looking at people entering the church for possible indications of weapons. One safety member asks another what they see on such-and-such a person.

Conclusion

The old saying is, "Practice makes perfect." Safety drills in the church are practices in responding the right way during emergency situations. Procedural drills aim at doing routine tasks right every time.

Training Notes

All members of church safety team need to be trained and certified. This is the aim of Sheepdog Church Security's training program Safety Member Certification with its eight training modules:

• Safety Team Fundamentals
• Active Shooter Response
• Deescalating Disruptive Persons
• Protecting Children from Abuse
• Basic Use of Force Laws
• Arson and Fire Safety
• Storms and Disasters
• Mass Trauma Emergencies

These are online classes, Self-Paced Training with a certification test for each class. Some classes should be taken by workers in the church who are not members of the safety team, such as Protecting Children from Abuse for children's and youth teachers and childcare staff and volunteers, and Arson and Fire Safety for ushers and custodians.[1]

Each class can be enhanced with drills, such as a "level of force drill" for Basic Use of Force Laws and "checking children in and out" for Protecting Children from Abuse.

References

1. Kris Moloney, Safety Member Certification, Sheepdog Church Security, © 2020 [https://sheepdog-church-security.thinkific.com/bundles/safety-member-certification].
2. Staff, "How to Conduct a Missing Child Drill: A guide to plan, conduct, and evaluate a missing child drill at your church," Adventist Risk Management, Inc., © 2020 [https://adventistrisk.org/getmedia/98993157-2e09-4d7a-ac4a-70d01906eb3b/guide-missingchilddrill-nad-can-en?ext=.pdf].
3. Mitch Hotts, "First responders to host mass casualty drill at Kensington Church: People in the area may see emergency vehicles and first responders," Macomb Daily, November 7, 2023 [https://www.macombdaily.com/2023/11/07/first-responders-to-host-mass-casualty-drill-at-kensington-church/].
4. Staff, "Get Ready to Shakeout!" ShakeOut, date unknown, [https://www.shakeout.org/].
5. Greg Dailey, "Kansas, Missouri hold statewide tornado drills Wednesday morning," KCTV 5, March 6, 2024 [https://www.kctv5.com/2024/03/06/be-prepared-kansas-missouri-hold-statewide-tornado-drills-wednesday-morning/].
6. Tobin Jacobson, "Arkansas church holds active shooter training," World Magazine, November 6, 2023 [https://wng.org/sift/arkansas-church-holds-active-shooter-training-1699288390].
7. News 12 Staff, "St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport holds hazmat drill," New York News 12, June 4, 2024 [https://newyork.news12.com/st-vincents-medical-center-in-bridgeport-holds-hazmat-drill].
8. ABC7 Chicago Digital Team, Evelyn Holmes, and Tre Ward, "Cleanup underway after train derails in Matteson; evacuation order lifted, officials say," WLS ABC7 Chicago, June 28, 2024 [https://abc7chicago.com/post/matteson-il-train-derailment-several-cars-derail-main/15005669/].
9. "New Madrid Seismic Zone," Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Seismic_Zone], citing a 1999 article in Riverfront Times [Stelzer, C. D. (December 15, 1999). "On Shaky Ground". Riverfront Times. Retrieved October 16, 2017].
10. Deena Bartel-Wagner, "Shaky Ground Beneath Your Feet," Adventist Risk Management, Inc., March 6, 2018 [https://adventistrisk.org/en-US/Safety-Resources/Solutions-Newsletter/2018/March/Shaky-Ground-Beneath-Your-Feet].
11. "East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment," Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine,_Ohio,_train_derailment].