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.