Hostage Drill Locks Down Bonner Hospital Exercise Taken More Seriously After Shootings In Seattle, Honolulu

After two workplace shootings elsewhere in the nation this week, Thursday’s emergency drill at Bonner General Hospital took on a little more urgency.

The mock shooting and hostage situation in the hospital involved state, county and city police, 911 dispatchers, as well as most of the hospital staff and the local Fire Department.

It had been planned for months, but the nearly three-hour drill came just a day after four people were shot in a Seattle boat repair business and two days after seven people were killed in a Xerox repair office in Honolulu.

“This is the scariest thing I’ve done,” said Sharon Bistodeau, an emergency room supervisor who helped plan the mock drill. “The police are really taking it seriously.”

So seriously, in fact, that they were turning away patients arriving at the hospital for X-rays and other care. Hospital Administrator Gene Tomt had to call police and request that they allow “actual patients” into the hospital.

Hospital community relations director Val Craig, who was locked in her office all morning while SWAT team members and faux gunmen sneaked through the hallways, called it “the most serious and realistic drill I’ve been involved with.”

The hospital drills usually are for other types of emergencies, such as train wrecks. The shooting scenario Thursday was prompted by the increase in shooting incidents around the nation, such as the Columbine High School shooting last spring in Colorado.

Hospital employees and administrators had a chance to practice their emergency plan - and discover its flaws - while the county’s SWAT team trained in a large, institutional setting. The scene looked realistic from the outside, too, where police tape blocked off streets and emergency vehicles surrounded the hospital.

Employees were “locked down” in their offices and departments after Sandpoint police officers, role-playing as gunmen carrying rifles, entered the hospital and started shooting blanks.

High school students in an occupational health class played hospital patients who were evacuated, at least until a gunman was discovered in a stairwell.

Melinda Walden, who turned 18 Thursday, played a patient who was also a victim of the gunmen.

“I’m dead,” Walden explained while lying on the hallway floor in a red-stained T-shirt. “I wasn’t able to make it.”

Nursing supervisor Susan Montgomery was able to drag one victim into her second-floor office, where she was locked down as well.

Occupational nurse Elizabeth Davies sat in a downstairs hallway with her hands tied behind her back and a realistic-looking gunshot wound to her leg. She said the gunmen taped a hand grenade to her to keep her from screaming.

The play-acting took place in areas of the hospital away from patients. Still, all patients were notified that the drill would be taking place.

The hospital’s public address system regularly notified employees that the drill was still under way and they were still under “lock-down.”

In the former surgical area, which is not now in use, Sandpoint police officers lurked in the dark with semiautomatic rifles, watching out for SWAT team members and keeping an eye on their “hostages.”

The phone rang at a nearby desk. It was the hostage negotiator.

“Tell him you want a van instead of a helicopter,” a gunman instructed.

“Where’s my pizza,” the other suspect said as he answered the phone.

The unexpected twists of the scenario kept hospital officials and law enforcement officers on their toes. Craig said that helped expose the weaknesses in their plan.

“The scenario goes outside the plan, so we have to build in flexibility,” she said, as the sound of a rifle crack penetrated her closed door.

The drill ended just before noon, with the SWAT team entering the hospital and catching the gunmen. Five employees and patients were “killed.”

“We learned that communication is always the most important part of the drill and usually the part that breaks down,” Craig said.

The hospital plans to have a debriefing to discuss where the emergency plan and their response could be improved.