T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA Belmont County SWAT Team members prepare to breach the entrance of St. Clairsville High School during its active shooter drill as St. Clairsville Police Officer T.J. Stewart orchestrates the coordination.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Public safety agencies from around the region assembled at St. Clairsville High School on Wednesday morning to participate in an active shooter drill that those agencies hope will educate the community about such emergencies.

The St. Clairsville Police Department, Belmont County SWAT Team, Ohio State Highway Patrol, Richland Township Police Department, Bellaire Police Department, Cumberland Trail Fire District, Wolfhurst Fire Department, Barton Volunteer Fire Department all took part in the drill, which lasted a little over an hour.

The drill began with a staff member shooting multiple rounds of a starting pistol, which sent the school into lockdown. Within minutes, the St. Clairsville Police Department and Ohio State Highway Patrol were on the scene with the Richland Township Police Department, Belmont County SWAT Team, and Bellaire Police Department arriving shortly after. As soon as each department arrived, they quickly entered the building acting as if there was an active shooter on the school’s premises.

“The whole event is to educate everyone involved, everybody in the community that would be affected by some sort of mass event like this,” St. Clairsville Police Chief Matt Arbenz said. “We all need to know how to work together and how to respond so we’re not into each other’s way, and give the students an idea of how to react and not panic and save as many lives as possible.”

Although the drill is similar every time, Arbenz said it is always evolving to better fit the needs of each school in which it occurs.

“The scenarios change from year to year,” Arbenz said. “Sometimes if there’s been a possible threat in the past year at the school, we will build off of that as, ‘well, what is the worst case scenario that could’ve happened when we dealt with that situation’ and we’ll build off of that.

“If nothing bad has happened which is great, then we’ll come up with our scenarios,” he added, “but we try to change the scenarios up year to year to give everybody different looks at different things to try and broaden their perspective as much as possible.”

“You can train and train and train but when something happens, everything is dynamic and everything happens so rapidly there’s never a way for everything to go as perfectly as you trained it,” Arbenz continued, “so you just have to throw as many monkey wrenches in as you can into different situations and try to give everybody a taste of what to do. What would you do if the worst thing in your community happened?”

Cumberland Trail Fire District, Wolfhurst Fire Department, Barton Volunteer Fire Department, and Tactical Dispatchers from Belmont County 9-1-1 Center were in attendance to simulate rescuing the victims of the active shooter.

He added that East Ohio Regional Hospital of Martins Ferry and WVU Reynolds Memorial Hospital of Glen Dale both participated in the drill. Each hospital received five “patients” who were students in the high school’s drama club. The students were made up with fake injuries and blood to sell the authenticity of the drill.