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After three years of planning, it all came together on Tuesday for local officials and staff from Adventist Hinsdale Hospital as they carried through with their largest full-scale critical incident response exercise.
“The goal is to take away learning elements that we can apply or adjust or invest in that will help us improve our plans in the eventuality that a bad situation were to ever occur,” said James Today, administrative director of facilities at Adventist Hinsdale. “We have to prepare for these things all the time.”
Lee Stapel, director of plant operations at the hospital, played an active shooter on a spree, running through various controlled areas of the hospital as staff called 911 and the security team put the hospital on lockdown. A “standoff” then took place at a vacant apartment building on the hospital campus. Nearly 200 people — from hospital staff to the Village’s public works personnel and neighboring police and fire departments to the SWAT team — participated in the emergency drill.
Today said while they practice drills regularly, this is the first year they’ve had role players in the hospital. Usually they do tabletop type drills where they run a piece of paper through the system to drill on everything from infant abductions to fires, he said.
Today added that all visitors and staff were notified about the drill, and they handed out flyers and repeatedly had pages going saying it was a safety check. They also had 40 controllers assigned to critical areas of the building to make sure patient care was not affected.
Hinsdale Deputy Police Chief Mark Wodka said this training is the next plateau to crisis planning the police department already has been actively participating in with Community Consolidated School District 181 and Hinsdale Township High School District 86. The schools regularly conduct lockdown drills in which police officials assist in critiquing plans and finding ways to make improvements.
He said Tuesday’s drill went very well and they were able to see both the good things in place and those that need improvement.
“I think the fact that we’re having these conversations, that we’re preparing for the worst and that we’re doing these things is leaps and bounds from other communities,” Wodka said. “And the exposure our officers, our administration and all of our staff involved gained strengthens their confidence and their abilities to use their equipment training and resources to protect life and to protect property.”
After three years of planning, it all came together on Tuesday for local officials and staff from Adventist Hinsdale Hospital as they carried through with their largest full-scale critical incident response exercise.
“The goal is to take away learning elements that we can apply or adjust or invest in that will help us improve our plans in the eventuality that a bad situation were to ever occur,” said James Today, administrative director of facilities at Adventist Hinsdale. “We have to prepare for these things all the time.”
Lee Stapel, director of plant operations at the hospital, played an active shooter on a spree, running through various controlled areas of the hospital as staff called 911 and the security team put the hospital on lockdown. A “standoff” then took place at a vacant apartment building on the hospital campus. Nearly 200 people — from hospital staff to the Village’s public works personnel and neighboring police and fire departments to the SWAT team — participated in the emergency drill.
Today said while they practice drills regularly, this is the first year they’ve had role players in the hospital. Usually they do tabletop type drills where they run a piece of paper through the system to drill on everything from infant abductions to fires, he said.
Today added that all visitors and staff were notified about the drill, and they handed out flyers and repeatedly had pages going saying it was a safety check. They also had 40 controllers assigned to critical areas of the building to make sure patient care was not affected.
Hinsdale Deputy Police Chief Mark Wodka said this training is the next plateau to crisis planning the police department already has been actively participating in with Community Consolidated School District 181 and Hinsdale Township High School District 86. The schools regularly conduct lockdown drills in which police officials assist in critiquing plans and finding ways to make improvements.
He said Tuesday’s drill went very well and they were able to see both the good things in place and those that need improvement.
“I think the fact that we’re having these conversations, that we’re preparing for the worst and that we’re doing these things is leaps and bounds from other communities,” Wodka said. “And the exposure our officers, our administration and all of our staff involved gained strengthens their confidence and their abilities to use their equipment training and resources to protect life and to protect property.”
Hinsdale Police Officer Louis Hayes, who helped coordinate Tuesday’s event from the police side, said the training exercise at the hospital campus is just another demonstration of the cooperation between police and the community in preparing for a worst-case scenario. He said it's a great feeling when residents walk up to them during the drill and say, "I feel safer knowing our police officers are doing this."
“It's not good enough to sit around a conference table and talk about how we would handle a critical incident,” Hayes said. “We have to actually get outside and go through the motions to see what works and what doesn't.”
