Emergency management officials from across the state are meeting in Myrtle Beach this week, and discussing active shooter incidents.
The South Carolina Emergency Management Association’s annual workshop started on Tuesday at the Marriott at Grande Dunes. It features several workshops and discussion sessions on hurricane preparedness, and active shooter incidents.
“We’ve seen it in theaters. We’ve seen it in malls. We’ve seen it at concerts, and way too offten now in school environments,” said Duane Hagelgans, one of the keynote speakers at the conference. He was part of the emergency task force that responded to the deadly Amish schoolhouse shooting in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania in 2006. “If it can happen in a rural community like Lancaster, where they have a strong Amish background, it can truly happen anywhere,” he said.
Hagelgans says preventing mass shootings like the one in Nickel Mines, and most recently at a school in Parkland, Florida, doesn’t just fall on law enforcement or first responders. He said, “We just have to be vigilant. We all need to be in the game together. If we’re not willing to step up and report things that look unusual, we have a problem.
The president of the South Carolina Emergency Management Association, Mario Formisano, says in the wake of recent active shooter incidents, he felt it was important to have Hagelgans share his experience with local emergency officials. “That’s gonna aid our planning, to understand from firsthand experience, from people who have responded to those types of incidents and have identified what went well, what they need to improve upon.”
Hagelgans stressed the importance of never forgetting these deadly incidents and the resulting devastation. “We don’t need to deal with the aftermath. We need to stop it upfront. The further they get behind us, we start getting complacent again.”
The South Carolina Emergency Management Association workshop continues until Thursday.
