FORT HARRISON — Fort Harrison took part in an active shooter exercise on Wednesday. The exercise is designed to assess the readiness, procedures, and protocols involved in responding to, and recovering from, an incident such as an active shooter.
The exercise took around four months of planning and coordination to have everything finalized for the day of the exercise.
"We got participation from everyone on post. So all of the Montana Army National Guard, the Montana Air National Guard, Department of Defense, civilians and contractors, and then also response from all of our partnering agencies, all of our first responders," said Lieutenant Eric Huebner, Exercise Coordinator for the active shooter exercise.
St. Peter's Health participated as one of the first responders, and the Red Cross was on hand to showcase recovery services.
Huebner says that it's something that needs to happen often, to keep protocols fresh.
"It's something we need to be that we do regularly and we need to continue doing regularly so that we keep that awareness for everyone on post," said Huebner.
While the training focused on a possible event at the fort, Huebner says the training doesn't end here.
"Working in an office building, working our 9 to 5, 8 to 5 jobs, we are preparing the same way everybody else is for potential terrorist threats, something like an active shooter," said Huebner, "Just because that's what we're all seeing in the media, seen on the news as one of the big issues facing everyone these days."
