By GLORIA PLEVA KACIK
Contributing Writer
The North Royalton Police and Fire Departments, along with North Royalton School personnel, will be conducting a training event at the North Royalton Elementary School during their holiday break.
On Monday and Tuesday, December 19 and 20, the first responders’ training event will take place. “The last time the training was done here in North Royalton was in 2018, when the High School was the location,” said North Royalton Police Chief Keith Tarase. “Then it was just police and fire doing the training. This time the school has a requirement to do the exercise, plus a drill every three years. We chose the elementary school because it’s newer and the officers aren’t as familiar with it.” Tarase said that this time there will be the addition of role players through a company that offers realistic role play victims.
Tarase said there have been full-scale exercises with other agencies responding, such as earlier this year in Strongsville, where a number of agencies responded, including the Cuyahoga County Department of Emergency Management. “We partner up with them. They train the instructors with all the different agencies, who then train their own people. North Royalton currently has two trained instructors in the police department and three in the fire department. Cities either then train in-house, or ask other cities to join. He said that this exercise will be on a smaller scale than the one in Strongsville.
North Royalton Fire Chief Bob Chegan said that this will be one of the many types of training that members of the fire department are required to do for certification. “This type of training started about ten years ago. We try to work together, to integrate and make sure we are all on the same page. We have some new fireman and police officers, that have to be trained. Training is the backbone to be ready for any event.”
The scenario that will be the basis for the training is an active shooter event. The overall training consists of a classroom portion, going over the concepts of the response, and the actual exercise portion. Tarase said that the area is broken down into three zones: the hot zone is where the shooter would be located, the area surrounding that would be the warm zone and then a cold zone, which is a further proximity. He said that the fireman/EMTs will not go into the hot zone, but into the warm and cold zones, with police accompaniment to start evacuation and treatment. “What we look at is how to move as a team together,” said Tarase. “For the fire, where and how best to treat victims. This training will primarily focus on the rescue portion of an event. The training on dealing with the active shooter takes place more internally, said Tarase. That training is done separately, and is broken down into more specified training components to an active shooter response.”
“Members of our safety team will be present for the drill,” stated North Royalton School Superintendent Mike Laub. “We are happy to support this collaboration. It provides an additional level of training as well as an opportunity to familiarize first responders with our newest facility.”