Picatinny Arsenal drills for mass casualty disaster

ROCKAWAY TWP. – Following two incidents earlier this year, officials at Picatinny Arsenal made it a goal to improve external and internal communication when reacting to an active shooter and chemical attack drill Tuesday morning.

The drill, which fulfilled Picatinny’s annual requirement of a full-scale exercise, involved two active shooters who breached the fence along the border of the base and entered a building, one of whom also released chlorine gas during the attack.

In all, about 100 emergency personnel responded including Picatinny Arsenal’s police, fire, EMS, and Haz-Mat and decontamination teams. They were helped by mutual aid from Morris County and neighboring towns including police, fire, and EMS, the Morris County Sheriff’s Department, and the county SWAT team.

Those personnel were tasked with securing the two shooters and rescuing and then treating the victims in what became a “mass casualty” scenario.

Picatinny Arsenal Brig. Gen. Patrick Burden was off-site during the training, so Chief of Staff Col. Scott Turner was in charge during the drill. He responded to the shooter scene and then worked out of a nearby incident command center, for the majority of the exercise.

“I think it went fairly well. We accomplished our objectives and learned ways to improve,” Turner said. “There are always things we can do better. Internal communication will never go perfectly, but we were able to get information out. It’s still early on in our evaluation, but it was a good exercise overall.”

In March, two civilian explosive technicians working at Picatinny Arsenal were severely injured in an on-site accident. In April, Picatinny was evacuated and the neighboring roadways were shut down after a driver attempted to enter the base in a suspicious vehicle, prompting an “explosive threat” protocol.

Both situations left residents nearby asking questions, seeking more information and wondering if they should be concerned as information began to spread, not all of which was accurate.

Officials at Picatinny Arsenal said they have been working on improving their relaying of information, which they put to the test in Tuesday’s drill.

“We learned a lot from the suspicious vehicle incident several months ago. We were constantly fighting misinformation. There was a lot of speculation and we tried our best to push out the facts,” Turner said. “We’re further along because we’ve been working on it since then.”

Picatinny Arsenal Garrison Commander Lt. Col. Ingrid Parker said communication was key to a successful drill.

“We built transparency into our training objectives, so people outside and inside the installation weren’t guessing at what was going on,” Parker said. “It’s the responsible thing to do in 2015. With the updates, we weren’t shooting for perfection, just getting information out as soon as possible. Expeditious but responsible as well.”

When they last performed a drill in October 2013, officials sent one message outside the base. This time, they sent four during the two and a half hour scenario.

Those messages were shared over several platforms, including social media, stressing that the update was simply an exercise. Several agencies as high as the Federal Bureau of Investigation were notified during the simulation.

“We are trying to be as prepared as we can be with the resources we have given the real-world events of the past 15 years,” Turner said. “The key takeaway is you can never train enough to work on communicating internally and externally. These are ever-present challenges and we knew that going in. This is just a reminder.”

About 40 civilian employees volunteered to be the victims in the scenario. After exiting the building with the shooters and gas reaction, hostages were decontaminated, going through a full shower and changing into scrubs before being bussed to a safer area.

Victims were treated as realistically as possible, pumping fake blood for EMS to tend to, getting carried away on stretchers, and being decontaminated by teams due to the fake gas exposure.

“Since April we’ve been focusing on synchronization and we were looking forward to implementing what we’ve learned,” Parker said. “That’s hard to see until you go through it. But it was well-planned and a good exercise. We did pretty well, but we still have work to do.”

Of the 40 victims, about 25 were taken to Morristown Medical Center and St. Clare’s Dover for further treatment.

Alan Robinson, director of Protection and Security Services for Atlantic Health System, was pleased to be included in the training.

“Thankfully this was just a drill, but Morristown Medical Center and all of the Atlantic Health System hospitals are continually working with state and municipal agencies to ensure we’re well prepared to handle emergencies,” Robinson said. “Today’s successful drill put us even more in-sync, and pressure tested our teams to prepare them for real-life situations.”

The drill also included thousands of employees and residents of Picatinny who were not near the incident but were instructed to “shelter in place.”

Officials also simulated an evacuation of the children on the base to see how much time it would take to do so.

And while all involved knew they would be training this morning, some of the key performers in the drill went “off script,” forcing personnel to think on the fly.

“We’re rehearsing our battle drills and exercising our staff to provide accountability and communication on the installation,” Parker said. “Going off script allows people to respond naturally.”

Turner said emergency personnel responded appropriately to the situations in real-time.

“You always have to deal with ‘the fog of war.’ You have plans for what might happen but you are always going to be thrown for a loop,” Turner said. “We knew what would happen here and even then, the actors responded in different ways than we expected.”

Located off Route 15 on about 6,400 acres in portions of Rockaway and Jefferson townships, Picatinny has been designated as the Joint Center of Excellence for Armaments and Ammunition. It provides nearly 90 percent of the Army's lethality capabilities and other products and services to all branches of the U.S. military.

The arsenal employs about 6,000 people. The majority are civilian employees or contractors, making it one of the top employers in Morris County. Including family members of service people living on the base, about 6,700 people are on the base at a given time.

Staff Writer Michael Izzo: 973-428-6636; mizzo@GannettNJ.com