ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Police Chief Matt Arbenz informed St. Clairsville City Council that an active shooter drill will take place at St. Clairsville High School at 9 a.m. Wednesday.

“Every year we do an active shooter event at St. Clairsville-Richland City Schools and it’s to educate everybody,” Arbenz said. “It’s to educate the kids, the staff, the first responders and the hospitals.”

He added that East Ohio Regional Hospital of Martins Ferry and WVU Reynolds Memorial Hospital of Glen Dale both participate in the drill. Each hospital will receive five “patients” who are students involved with the high school’s drama club, made up with mock injuries.

Arbenz said those student actors will come through either the hospitals’ emergency room trauma centers, either by ambulance or as “walking wounded” patients.

He added that when first responders come on the scene of the drill, they will triage and identify the wounds on the actors. Once identified and placed into an ambulance, the actors will be physically transported to EORH or Reynolds to be further triaged.

“They’re recorded in just as they would be. It puts a strain on the ER departments to receive that many patients at one time, which helps our local hospitals train for a mass event like that,” Arbenz said. “Unfortunately in this day and age, you have to have some sort of understanding of what to do in case of a big event like this. It’s an ugly thing to think about and to say we have to train our kids on this, but we do need to train our kids and staff on this.”

He added that he believes although it’s something that he wishes children and staff didn’t need to learn, it is crucial because if they are unaware of what to do it will make a terrible situation even worse.

“Every year we learn a little bit more, and every year we seem to fine tune everybody’s responses and reaction time. It helps the school update their annual plan and helps first responders update how we respond,” he said. “We hope and pray that the day never comes, but if it does we should be better prepared than a lot of other places.”

In addition to St. Clairsville schools and the St. Clairsville Police Department, the Belmont County S.W.A.T. Team, Ohio State Highway Patrol, Richland Township Police Department, Bellaire Police Department, Cumberland Trail Fire District, Wolfhurst Fire Department, Barton Volunteer Fire Department and Ohio Department Of Transportation are all involved in the drill in an effort to ensure that if a tragedy of this kind ever comes to Belmont County first responders will be able to quickly put an end to it.

ODOT’s involvement in the drill includes providing supplies and road signs for the police department to close the road in front of the high school during the drill.

“There’s a lot of people planning this thing out and we also invite superintendents from other school districts to come and observe and see what we do,” Arbenz said.

He added that the inclusion of various Ohio Valley superintendents provides an outside perspective and encourages a back-and-forth exchange of ideas to arrive at the best possible response method.