Three Safe Havens analysts completed site visits for school security assessments for 19 schools in the Capitol City School District in North Carolina in late February.   Safe Havens was recommended to the district by personnel from the Orange County, North Carolina Public Schools after a team of seven analysts completed a school security assessment for that district last year.

As with our work with the Orange County School System, we had excellent cooperation from the various public safety disciplines.  We were pleased to have the opportunity to work with some of the same public safety officials during both projects.  The law enforcement, fire service, emergency management, and emergency medical services personnel we worked with have been highly motivated and mission-focused in their efforts to help the districts prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from school crisis events.  Safe Havens analysts are proud to have had the opportunity to conduct school security assessments for both of these school districts.  

Our analysts utilize a variety of research-based techniques to evaluate school crisis plans, staff development approaches, and drill processes.  For example, while drills for school lockdowns are conducted in the traditional top-down manner and go off without a hitch, we have worked a number of school shootings where there were long delays between shots being fired and a school lockdown being announced.  Even more commonly, school there have been lengthy delays between the time a potentially dangerous person is spotted on campus and when school lockdowns have been announced on the public address system. 

Unfortunately, many school lockdown approaches are so heavily based on active shooter incidents, they are prone to failure when far more common situations arise.  In addition, research on how people make decisions under life and death stress indicates that practicing for a wider array of emergency situations better prepares the brain than focusing intently on only one scenario such as active shooter.  After working seven K12 school active shooter incidents and far more school shootings, stabbings, and other weapons incidents, my experience has been that the more school officials focus intently on active shooter incidents, the less prepared they will be for them and for the types of weapons incidents that happen most of the time.  Every active shooter incident I have worked has been dramatically different from the other six I have evaluated.  A pronounced tendency for people to focus on the last horrific incident so much that they become less prepared for a wider array of active shooter incidents.

I think it is fair to say that every client who has observed our one-on-one crisis simulations has made changes in how they prepare for school lockdowns.  This is because the reactions they observe are far different from what they anticipate.  This is especially true for school organizations that have focused intently on active shooter situations.   As Lt. Col. Dave Grossman so well states it, the human mind is the most powerful survival mechanism known to mankind.  But, as the extensive research of Grossman, Dr. Gary Klein and a number of other experts shows us, we can accidently program people to except certain outcomes to the point they become far less effective under actual field conditions when they could face an almost limitless array of specific situations. 

There is considerable research to show that exposing people to a wider array of scenarios in training and drills can improve their chances of survival in an actual event.   Learning from this extensive base of knowledge can improve survivability while also reducing fear among school employees and the students under their care.

I will be returning to the Zambezi Delta Region this summer to conduct research for the Sequel to Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters.  The research for this book will require extensive travel to conduct interviews with people who face life and death encounters.  For Staying Alive, we interviewed survivors of mass casualty shootings, other weapons assaults and military combat.  The next book will be based on interviews with a variety of practitioners who make life and death decisions on a regular and sometimes, daily basis. 

On this trip, I will have the opportunity to interview a fascinating individual, Poen Van Zyl.  Poen works as a guide in one of the most heavily populated wild game preserves in the world.  A South African citizen, Poen is fluent in English, Afrikaans, Portuguese and several tribal languages.  The vast and unfenced property Poen and a group of anti-poaching game scouts protect is home to astounding numbers of wildlife in comparison to a zoo or fenced national park.  The wildlife I saw visiting the National Park in Nairobi last month was depressingly paltry compared to the Zambezi Delta region, one of the last truly wild places in Africa.   While meat poaching rages out of control in most parts of the continent today, the thousands of square miles of the undeveloped Zambeze Delta region are home to bewildering numbers of wild and free animals whose numbers are steadily increasing through privately funded anti-poaching efforts.

Like the Africa of old, this means that someone taking a simple stroll in the woods can easily have a deadly encounter with a lion, elephant, cape buffalo, hippopotamus, or one of the regions innumerable crocodiles.  As but one example of the potential danger, a university study revealed that statistically, one person is eaten every other day in one fifty mile stretch of the Zambezi River. 

Poen and his masterful bush trackers know how to spot a mamba in the forest, the tiniest sign of an unexploded landmine left over from the bush war, a carefully concealed triggering device for a leg-hold hold trap made from a rusty car door spring, the faint sign of a lion is concealed in the bush or the body language of an elephant that indicates an impending charge.  Poen kindly agreed to share with me how they and the clients they guide into this remote wilderness region can travel such danger-filled territory in relative safety.  I will see how these brave men use situational awareness and pattern matching and recognition to detect and react to danger.  Like the public safety officials, members of elite military units, and emergency medical professionals I will interview, Poen and his game scouts will explain life-saving skills that can impact who lives and who dies.

I am excited to be able to interview the amazing men who make it their life’s mission to face death in the long grass with anticipation and respect for nature rather than fear.  I feel truly blessed and fortunate to be able to meet and interact with such fascinating people.