Unified Command Must Be in School, First Responder Playbook

It is said that in a disaster scenario, the first people on the scene — neighbors, relatives, passersby — are the true first responders and can and should do everything to help anyone in danger.

But what about in a school setting? In a school emergency, teachers and administrators are often lauded for heroic efforts to save children before law enforcement or fire personnel arrived on the scene.

But that’s when the balance of power shifts and the teachers and administrators become survivors as police, fire or EMS — depending on the emergency — take over the situation.

“I’ve had situations where principals thought they were in charge in a fire situation and they were trying to tell the fire department what to do,” said John McDonald, chief operating officer of the Council for School Safety Leadership during an Aug. 20 webinar hosted by ZeroNow called “Respond to Threats with Confidence.” “We need to understand our role and then their role and the role we have together.”

That means having practiced and collaborated and come to a mutual understanding of incident command prior to an event happening.

“At some point, it’s not the school that’s managing this,” McDonald said. He added that he’s also seen principals try to tell a bomb squad what to do when they arrive at a scene.

“What schools need to do, frankly, is be really good partners at unified command,” McDonald said. “Give me an administrator and a custodian and we can rule the world, because we can share information with first responders that they need to maximize their time.”

Using a football analogy to describe incident command during a school event, Jeffrey Nielsen, school safety and security director for Milford Public Schools in Connecticut, said, “Before we play the game, let’s sit down with those players and understand each other’s roles and go through unified command so we’re not putting ourselves in those positions when it happens.”

Continuing the football analogy, Corey Goble, director of safety and security at Baldwin County Schools in Georgia, said, “The last time you want to determine who your quarterback is is in the game. That’s why the National Football League has preseason. Unified command is understanding what roles everyone plays.”

Understanding what unified command means is what being a good partner entails, and that needs to be established early in a relationship before a real event happens.

Establishing who is in charge at the school before first responders arrive is also something that is critical, needs training and has to be done early. And that training should yield a calmness as everyone understands their roles and what to do next.

“If you don’t panic, the people around you don’t panic,” McDonald said. “You really need to follow your protocols. If you use Run, Hide, Fight, then implement that with fidelity. Whatever you use, train with fidelity so it becomes second nature.”

“The single biggest failure we see is internal communications breakdown,” McDonald said. “And when that happens, chaos ensues.”