DAYTON, Ohio — A year after a chaotic “active shooter” false alarm at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base here, a base official says a review of the scare and the response to it has led to improvements.
Col. Tom Sherman, 88th Air Base Wing and installation commander, says a review board’s recommendations have been implemented at the base in the hope that they will prevent anything similar to what happened one year ago Friday, according to a report in the Dayton Daily News.
“We need to use what happened not as something that defines us, but something that makes us better,” Sherman told the paper. “I think that we’re going into this better than we were at this time last year.”
The false alarm on Aug. 2, 2018, resulted from miscommunications surrounding simultaneous training exercises, an active shooter drill at Kitty Hawk Chapel and a mass casualty exercise held by the 88th Medical Group at the Wright-Patterson Medical Center.
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The confused reactions to the two emergency exercises snowballed into a massive, chaotic active shooter scare in which security forces shot a door open.
And while the incident ultimately ended with only minor injuries to one security forces airman, it could have been far worse.
The communications breakdown that occurred that day “led to a completely uncoordinated and ineffective” response that could have ended up causing serious injuries or property damage, officials said.
Sherman says radio systems have been added to improve communication with outside authorities, with a specific staging area used when they are contacted.
Wright-Patt has also linked its emergency systems with 911 call centers so the base is sharing information with the appropriate dispatch locations throughout the area, the newspaper reported..
The word “exercise” is being repeated over the loudspeaker three times before drill communications during training exercises this week at the base near Dayton.
The 88th ABW is one of the largest air base wings in the Air Force with more than 5,500 Air Force military, civilian and contractor employees.
