Active shooter

Given the numerous active shooter and hostile events (ASHE) happening each year, it is important for fire and emergency medical service (EMS) agencies to share the lessons learned from such events. This paper discusses the elements needed for an effective fire and EMS response, beginning with the unified command/collaboration approach with law enforcement that allows for the proper management of such events. The article further defines the command and control elements, as well as the proper staffing and actions needed from fire and EMS to remove, triage, treat and transport victims effectively...

A steady increase in shooting practices is observed worldwide. Potential lead exposure at shooting ranges poses a risk to their employees and users, which is not widely reported outside of the USA, especially in Poland. Exposure to lead results from the use of bullets containing lead and the main route of exposure to this metal at shooting ranges is inhalation, i.e., during shooting or cleaning. The aim of this study was to assess lead exposure of employees and users in selected indoor shooting ranges in central Poland...

OBJECTIVE: The Stop the Bleed course aims to improve bystander hemorrhage control skills and may be improved with point-of-care aids. We sought to create and examine a variety of cognitive aids to identify an optimal method to augment bystander hemorrhage control skills in an emergency scenario. METHODS: Randomized trial of 346 college students. Effects of a visual or visual-audio aid on hemorrhage control skills were assessed through randomization into groups with and without prior training or familiarization with aids compared with controls...

Use of clean versus sterile pneumatic tourniquet cuffs Key words: clean, sterile, pneumatic tourniquet, incision site, cuff placement. Active shooter crisis preparedness Key words: active shooter preparedness, emergency response, active shooter event, evacuate, barricade. Heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning parameters Key words: laminar airflow (LAF); unidirectional ultraclean air-delivery system; unidirectional downward airflow; turbulent; heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) system. Modifying directional air pressure settings Key words: directional air pressure, negative-pressure room, positive-pressure room, bronchoscopy, parameters...

Shooting errors have multi-faceted causes with contributing factors that include sensorimotor activity and cognitive failures. Empirical investigations often assess mental errors through threat identification, yet other cognitive failures could contribute to poor outcomes. The current study explored several possible sources of cognitive failures unrelated to threat identification with live fire exercises. Experiment 1 examined a national shooting competition to compare marksmanship accuracy, expertise, and planning in the likelihood of hitting no-shoot or unintended targets...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

This study examined the results of an electronic survey of residential care facilities for the elderly (RCFE) in California in 2021 to provide insight on key elements of emergency plans and facility preparedness for the COVID-19 pandemic and future emergencies. Surveys were distributed to RCFE administrators using publicly available emails found on the California Health and Human Services Open Data Portal. Responses from 150 facility administrators included data on their perception of current and future facility preparedness for COVID-19 and other emergency scenarios, items included in facility evacuation/shelter-in-place plans, and hazard vulnerability analyses and training practices of facility staff...

Specialist police tactical groups (PTGs) are involved in situations that extend beyond the capability of general duties police and can include responding to active shooter incidents. Due to the nature of their tasks, these officers typically carry and wear additional equipment which can impart an increased physical cost, for which the officers must be prepared. The aim of this study was to examine the heart rate responses and movement speeds of specialist PTG officers during a multistorey active shooter scenario...

There have been 130 mass shootings in the United States from 1982 to June, 2022 according to the Mother Jones database of active shooter events. In these critical scenarios, making the right decisions while evacuating can be the difference between life and death. However, emergency evacuation is intensely stressful, which along with lack of verifiable real-time information may lead to costly incorrect decisions. In this paper, we demonstrate the effectiveness of a non-homogeneous semi-Markov-Decision-Process (NHSMDP) based naive algorithm that relies on prior knowledge about the layout of a building and uses recurring updates of the shooter's location (based on automatic processing of images from a camera network) to provide an optimized egress plan for evacuees...

Few sports medicine physicians have extensive experience in managing mass casualty trauma. Yet many, or most, of us find ourselves covering competitions, races, and events in venues where thousands of athletes and spectators gather, and these could quickly become mass casualty events in the setting of an explosion/bombing, active shooter, or similar incident. When this happens, the sports medicine team, already on site, is in a unique position to provide immediate assistance until additional resources arrive...

Consumption of game meat may exert additional lead exposure with potential health risks. The purpose of the present pilot study was to determine blood lead concentration in game meat and no game meat consumers in southern Germany. Concentration of lead in blood (µg·L- 1 ) was significantly higher in game meat consumers (n = 190; 21.3 [20.0; 29.7]) compared to study participants consuming no game meat (n = 74; 20.0 [20.0; 20.0], p < 0.0001). In study participants with no game meat consumption, blood lead concentration was significantly higher in those who perform active hunting (80...

On October 10, 2019, the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office (LCSO) and Loudoun County Fire and Rescue (LCFR) led one of the largest act of violence (AVI) exercises ever conducted in Loudoun County, Virginia. Over 300 participants and 50 role-players participated across 15 county departments and agencies within Loudoun County. The exercise identified an important recommendation: "future joint unified command trainings are needed throughout the fire and law enforcement command structures." Effective, unified command is an essential NFPA 3000 principle of responding to an AVI...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Shooting is a sport dominated by psychological factors. Hence, disturbing the shooter's sensory function during aiming will seriously affect his psychological state and shooting performance. Electroencephalograph (EEG) measurements of 30 skilled marksmen in the shooting preparation stage under noisy disturbance, weak light, and normal conditions were recorded. Therefore, the differences in neural mechanisms in the shooter's brain during shooting aiming in different disturbance conditions were explored using an analytical approach that employs functional connectivity and brain network analysis based on graph theory...

Firearm-related injury and death is a serious public health issue in the U.S. As more Americans consume news and media online, there is growing interest in using these channels to prevent firearm-related harms. Understanding the firearm-related narratives to which consumers are exposed is foundational to this work. This research used the browsing behavior of a representative sample of American adults to identify seven firearm-related content "ecosystems" (defined as naturally occurring networks of channels watched by the same users) on YouTube; we then described the demographics and internet search patterns of users affiliated with each ecosystem...

Colleges and universities are challenged with making their campuses safe from many threats of violence such as active shooters by using strategies that are effective and acceptable to their campus communities. Implementing strategies that are ineffective can waste resources and implementing strategies that are unacceptable may result in students, faculty, and staff that protest or leave the campus. The current study evaluated the acceptability of 11 different strategies to prevent active shooters on college/university campuses...

INTRODUCTION: Firearm-related deaths have become the leading cause of death in adolescents and children. Since the Sutherland Springs, TX mass casualty incident (MCI), the Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council (STRAC) for trauma instituted a prehospital whole blood (WB) program and blood deployment program for MCI's. METHODS: The program was adopted statewide by the Texas Emergency Medical Task Force (EMTF), of which STRAC is the lead for EMTF-8. The recent active shooter MCI in Uvalde, TX was the first time the MCI blood deployment program had been utilized...

We investigated differences in quantitative electroencephalogram (EEG) patterns associated with game usage patterns and genre among patients with Internet gaming disorder (IGD). Data from 140 participants (76 IGD patients and 64 healthy controls) were analysed. The IGD group was divided into subgroups based on game usage patterns (single game [SG] or multiple games [MGs]) and genre (multiplayer online battle arena, first-person shooter [FPS], or massively multiplayer online role-playing game [MMORPG; hereafter, MMG])...

OBJECTIVE: This study evaluated the causal relationships among situation awareness (SA), cohesion, and autonomic synchrony ( S E ) within teams. SA is often a team effort and should be more accurate in better-functioning teams. BACKGROUND: Cohesive teams perform better overall, although the relationship appears reciprocal; the relationship to SA has not been considered previously. S E is a collective neurocognitive activity that has been connected to team coordination, communication, and performance in some circumstances...

BACKGROUND: There has been an increase in violent acts against hospital employees, including active shooter events. Emergency department (ED) staff must be able to respond to these events efficiently to ensure the safest possible outcome. However, few in our ED were aware of our hospital's active shooter protocol. We aimed to increase staff knowledge of and confidence in these guidelines. METHODS: We developed and implemented a 7-week spiral curriculum using the Kern model of curriculum development...