McALESTER —
A “bad guy” took many hostages at the McAlester Ambulatory Surgery Center Saturday morning during a collaborative training exercise involving the surgery center, the McAlester Fire Department and the McAlester Police Department.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Matt Drummond played the “bad guy” while police, fire and medical staff worked as they would during a hostage takeover at the medical facility.
“We plan on doing hostage related training drills,” said John Johnson of McAlester’s Ambulatory Surgery Center. “We’ll do three different drills, or scenarios. One will involve a gunman taking hostages, another will be a guy coming in to steal drugs and the third will be a disgruntled employee coming in with a weapon.”
Det. Sgt. Brent McAlester said this type of training “demonstrates the need for good communication between the fire and police departments ... it will also show us where our weaknesses are and areas which we need to improve.”
“Our entire staff, including LPN students from Kiamichi VoTech and family members are participating in the training today,” said Lee Rogers, an event coordinator from the Ambulatory Surgery Center. “This is something we do on a yearly basis. We train in different scenarios. Once it was tornado training, and fire training and even a biological entity outbreak. And this year it’s a hostage situation and we’re training alongside the McAlester police and fire departments. It helps all of us train simultaneously.”
McAlester Fire Chief Brett Brewer said that he plans to have a similar sort of training every year where fire department personnel work alongside the McAlester SWAT team.
McAlester City Manager Pete Stasiak was at the hospital Saturday morning, observing the city’s emergency responders train. “This is exciting to see — our fire department, police department, hospital and other agencies working together. It’s a scenario we don’t ever want to come across but it is important that everyone is trained to handle it properly.”
Contact Rachel Petersen at rpetersen@mcalesternews.com.
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