School Shooting Emergency Training - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

It's almost impossible to prepare for an unthinkable act of horror like the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, but a business in Mandan travels to schools--to provide real-life safety training.

The manager of Wenck Associates--a business in Mandan specializing in emergency preparedness-- says they recently traveled to Bottineau's school to provide teacher education and a realistic shooting scenario.

Here are images of the training--that took place after school.

They have a shooter with a starter pistol firing off blanks, with teachers and administrators responding throughout the building.

In this exercise, they also included local law enforcement.

An emergency planning consultant, Derek Hanson, says just like every shooting is different, so are their recommendations for every school.

He does suggest having locked entrances and surveillance cameras.

"Those schools who have armed guards for example, do not see the school shootings that occur, I'm not saying it should come to that in North Dakota, but certainly if we lock our doors, and screened our people a little more carefully, that in itself would make a huge difference." says Derek Hanson/Wenck Associates Manager.

Hanson says it's unfortunate that it takes an event like a shooting to get people's attention, but in the past few days, they have been getting many calls from school districts and county commissioners.

Wenck Associates is one of few businesses in the country that do this kind of training.

To learn more, you can visit their website:

www.wenck.com