People who have seen me keynote conferences over the past five to six years are familiar that I often run through a series of mass casualty school attacks involving edged weapons.  I have blogged on this topic several times in recent years because we have noted a pattern for these types of attacks.  My officers worked two multiple victim edged weapons assaults committed by students during my ten-year tenure as a school district police chief in Bibb County, Georgia.  Having been attacked with edged weapons on a number of occasions and having been cut once with a box cutter, I have had a deep respect for what someone can do with a blade. 

One of our concerns about the intensive focus on active shooter incidents in schools in recent years has been that this often results in school and public safety officials failing to prepare for events like the attack that took place in a Pennsylvania high school. The majority of school crisis plans in this country have no relevant protocol for this type of attack or even the far more typical edged weapons assaults. 

This week’s tragic attack should be a stark warning to us all that focusing intently on active shooter incidents is not a balanced approach.  We have noted other attack patterns such as those involving fire as a weapon in school attacks that are still frequently overlooked in many school security approaches.  While it is not possible nor even perhaps logical to attempt to address every possible attack methodology, we should learn from past incidents over a long time span and with a global perspective.  As this week’s incident shows, international patterns can become a local issue very rapidly and with significant outcomes.  This week’s attack follows hundreds of serious injuries and deaths in K12 schools from incidents involving mass casualty edged weapons attacks in other countries.  We felt this was such a significant pattern that we discuss it in the introduction for our new book Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters.  

When we started writing more than a year ago, we decided to include several references to mass casualty attacks involving edged weapons and fire. We continue to urge educators and their public safety partners to be sure they are using the all-hazards approach to school crisis planning. 

National media are reporting that as many as twenty students have been stabbed at Franklin Regional High School near Pittsburgh this morning.  Mass casualty attacks with edged weapons at K12 schools have taken place before in the United States and particularly in Asia.  As we have described in previous blogs, hundreds of students and school staff have been killed and injured in edged weapons attacks in schools in the Peoples of China in recent years. 

These types of attack have been so prevalent globally that we discuss them several times in our new book Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters.  We have been deeply concerned for some time now that the pervasive focus on active shooter incidents may leave schools vulnerable to alternative mass casualty attack approaches like today’s attack.

As we have pointed out before, the problem of mass casualty edged weapons assaults is exacerbated by the intensive focus on active shooter incidents which can leave school staff and students ill prepared for an array of other types of attack methodologies.  As fire, edged weapons, explosives, and other types of weapons have often been used for mass casualty school attacks, it is important that prevention, preparedness and response measures be broad enough to address any type of attack that occurs.

We review many school crisis plans each year.  There are recurrent patterns involving opportunities for improvement that we notice.  I have found one of these patterns in several school crisis plans I reviewed in recent weeks.  This involves lumping the same action steps for tornado warning and tornado watch into one set of action steps.  Barring unusual circumstances, schools typically have different sets of action steps for each of these different situations.  Attempting to use the same set of action steps for both could prove to be dangerous.  If your schools are in an area where tornadoes can occur and the severe weather protocols do not provide different action steps for tornado warning and tornado watch, it would be a good idea to work with local fire service and/or emergency management personnel to update your plans.

For a number of years, we have advised many of our clients to consider using large numbers and when possible, directional lettering (i.e. 1W for a front exterior door facing the West).  This can help emergency responders arrive faster at the location at a school where they are needed when seconds count.  This approach can also be helpful for daily wayfinding, helping visitors locate the appropriate door during a special event, or even for improving communications for maintenance requests.  Our preference is for schools to place these numbers above the door on the exterior for outside way finding and low on the interior to help occupants evacuate in the event of a fire.

There are, however, times when external numbering could prove to be helpful to an aggressor.  For example, during an assessment project for an independent school overseas, we advised a client not to utilize exterior door numbering.  The school is at unusually high risk for terrorist attacks and is surrounded by a high privacy wall to make it harder for terrorists to conduct surveillance of the school.  The campus is rather large with many buildings and can be difficult for someone who is not familiar with the layout to navigate.  Due to unreliable law enforcement response in the region, we felt the benefits of this type of numbering were outweighed by the risks of terrorists being able to more rapidly locate victims in an attack on the campus.  Trusted armed security personnel who would respond to an attack can utilize printed virtual tours and their familiarity with the campus for emergency wayfinding.

In the U.S., a far more common hazard involves situations where classroom and office numbers are placed on outside windows.  This could allow someone coming to a school to attack or attempting to abduct a specific person to more easily locate a particular victim or group of victims.  We suggest school and public safety officials weigh the advantages and disadvantages of this approach before marking individual rooms on the outside of the building.