Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Aug 24/01) - Incidents like the mass murder of students at Columbine high school in Colorado are a reminder that even schools are not immune to violence.

So when emergency vehicles surrounded St. Patrick high school on Wednesday, people were more than curious.

Municipal enforcement officer Marty Albrecht re-routes traffic during an inter-agency training exercise at St. Patrick's High School. - Dawn Ostrem/NNSL photo

"What's going on?" asked a woman who wandered up to municipal enforcement officer Marty Albrecht, who was re-routing vehicles away from the scene.

It was an emergency response exercise, testing the ability of RCMP and city emergency services to handle a violent incident at the school.

The "victims" were actors, playing the part of teachers gathered at the school for a professional development day.

"There are multiple casualties and multiple offenders," was all RCMP Sgt. Al McCambridge would tell reporters at a press conference outside the school after the exercise.

It was realistic. The exercised involved about 50 personnel, including the RCMP's emergency response team, school staff, Stanton Regional Hospital, city firefighters, paramedics and bylaw officers.

Radios crackled with hints of what was going on inside: "another male casualty."

McCambridge said this kind of drill must be undertaken.

"It's a fact of life in North America that violent incidents occur in schools and we have to be prepared to act."

St. Patrick principal John Bowden agreed that it's important to prepare for all contingencies.

"We practise fire drills regularly six times per year," he said.

"But involving incidences of violence we needed to test our plans and that has never happened before."

The exercise, called Game Keeper, tested the ability of the agencies to work together in a crisis.

"This is to task as many agencies as possible," McCambridge said.

"We identified some shortcomings and some things that went really well. Communications between responding agencies is always an issue ... We are looking into trying to tweak that."

McCambridge said the exercise proved, however, that they are as prepared as they can for such an incident.

"We can always hope it never happens here," he said. "But if it ever does happen you want to be prepared."

Bowden agreed. "It is one thing to be prepared for an exercise like this and it is another thing to live through it," he said.