1. You are the Principal the local Shining Star Elementary School. Your school contains 400 students and is part of a four-school cluster. Your cluster is part of a school district that contains over 100 schools from all levels
In comparison to higher levels, the powers of the Shining Star Elementary School Principal are rather limited as he/she is not able to contact the agencies in charge of domestic terroristic threat directly. The Principal’s assets for handling the incident include teachers and other school workers at his/her disposal. Thus, it would be wise enough to contact them immediately and give orders on watching children and – if it is possible (e.g. if some classrooms are located in the remote areas of the school building – hiding them or evacuating at least a part of them at once. At the same time, the first thing that should be done should the terrorists enter the school is calling 911 and giving all the information about the address, the nature of the emergency, key details of it and the phone number from which the call was made (911.gov). Moreover, to my thinking, the Principal should call the head of the school district so that the students of other nearest schools could be evacuated. As the Principal has no powers for controlling or interdicting the terroristic threat, the further actions should be planned and coordinated by authorized persons and institutions, while the main task of the Principal will be to do his/her best to minimize children’s contact with the armed people and to fulfill these people’s immediate demands in order to minimize their aggression and casualties until the agencies of higher rank will eliminate the threat.
2. You are the emergency manager for this county of over 300,000 people. Your position is to prepare the county for disasters in an area where the worst expected disaster is fire from storms or drought. Wind storms are the next worst expected disaster. Your county is surrounded by counties of equal or larger sizes in a larger city with a population of five million persons. Shining Star Elementary School is in your county.
If I were an emergency manager of the county where the occupied elementary school is located, I would be supposed to develop the strategy of handling the issue with the assets I already have. However, as the key disasters, the county is prepared for our fires and wind storms, there can be a lack of resources for proper handling of the incident. According to the principles of emergency management, managers are expected to synchronize the work of all possible related services and ensure efficient and prompt cooperation between them. In our case, the emergency manager (who has probably been contacted by the 911 emergency service) has to contact the counterparts from other city’s counties and
- inform them about the potential threat;
- ask for additional resources to be sent;
- develop a strategy of localizing the threat so that it can’t pose a threat for other counties.
At the same time, the emergency manager should be able to send police, fire vehicles and ambulances to the school (especially in case if several children were killed). Anyway, police should be sent there immediately as they can be rather efficient in fighting and eliminating terrorists (Clarke). For more powers and taking further decisions, the higher officials should be involved.
3. You are the Mayor of a town within the county that contains the Shining Star Elementary School. The city police and fire department work for you.
The mayor is probably the last resort before passing the management of the current incident to the state or federal level. As the main governor of the city, he/she has much resources and assets for localizing and eliminating the threat: police, fire department, alarm response forces and emergency management organizations are at his/her disposal. The Mayor of the city where the incident takes place is responsible for managing all the emergency departments including police and fire department. At the same time, the mayor should be responsible for negotiating with the terrorists, listening to their demands and making a decision whether these demands can be fulfilled: for example, the demand for access to the media should be fulfilled or rejected on the level of the city authorities as public disclosures in the news media can sow panic and fear among people.
First, the mayor should contact and make orders for the local emergency management agencies and control that alarm response forces are immediately sent to the school area. At the same time, the mayor could involve the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and other related agencies of city level; in case the situation worsens or cannot be controlled by the agencies that are already involved, it would be reasonable to contact and involve organizations of federal level like Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security, etc.
4. You are the Chairman of the County Supervisors in the county that contains the Shining Star Elementary School. The county sheriff, fire department, health department, and county support offices work for you.
Being a Chairman of the County Supervisors, one would occupy the middle position between the local and city level of authority. In other words, the Chairman should be between the school Principal, county emergency manager, and the city Mayor. Thus, the Chairman has the same assets the Mayor has put on the local county level: county sheriff and police department, health department, fire department, and all the county support offices. At the same time, the Chairman should be also in charge of the county emergency management agency controlling the actions of the emergency managers (like the one described earlier) and working on the strategy of immediate actions. If I were the Chairman of this county, I would make sure first of all that the health department sends the ambulances to the place, then ensuring the coordination between emergency managers. At the same time, I would involve and consult with the Mayor in terms of deploying SWAT.