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HAHS teachers study gun sounds

Mirror photo by Russ O’Reilly / Hollidaysburg Borough Police Chief Rodney Estep Jr. participates in a special drill at Hollidaysburg Area High School on Friday.

HOLLIDAYSBURG — Hearing blanks fired from an AR-15, a .38-caliber revolver and 12-gauge shotgun throughout the senior high school was a horrible but necessary experience, teachers said Friday.

Hollidaysburg Area High School teachers have classroom plans for “Run. Hide. Fight.” scenarios and go over a variety of hypothetical emergency situations with students in homeroom every week, administrators said.

But on Friday, teachers added to their preparation the knowledge of what shots fired from an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle actually sound like in their school hallways.

Knowing the sound of a gun is important for reducing the time it takes to jump into action, training instructors said.

The mass shooting that killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, Aug. 3 started with what sounded like boxes being dropped, said one employee quoted by NBC. That’s what she thought, but it was an AK-style rifle opening fire.

Misidentifying the sound of gunfire during mass shootings is a common thread. One of the survivors of the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 said she thought the shots fired from two semi-automatic pistols was someone chopping wood with an ax, said Hollidaysburg Area resource officer Wayne Bush.

That’s why trained firearms instructors including Bush conducted the special drill at Hollidaysburg Area High School on Friday during a teacher in-service.

Bush has served as the school’s armed resource officer for six years and is a retired state trooper. It was Bush’s idea for the training.

“It’s seconds of denial or hesitation that we are trying to eliminate,” Bush said.

Teacher Dean Grenfell was surprised at how shots fired down the hall from his room sounded like a coach’s clipboard or a book dropping against the floor. To test his theory, he picked up a heavy book and dropped it on the linoleum.

“It’s very similar,” he said, almost in disbelief.

The training was not mandated, and teachers could skip it, but all high school teachers and even secretaries and custodians — totaling more than 70 people — participated.

Hollidaysburg Borough Police Chief Rodney Estep Jr. also participated as an instructor.

The trained professionals allowed staff and faculty to hear what actual gunfire sounds like from various firearms at various locations inside and outside the school. No live ammunition was used, and no students were present, having been dismissed early.

One of the last rounds fired was just outside math teacher Jennifer Carney’s room. After the drill ended, she opened her door while the air was still thick with smoke and the smell of gunpowder.

“If a real shooter was that close, we’d be breaking the windows to get the students out. I would be barricading the door. We have cardboard to put over the window to eliminate a shooter’s visibility. To stop the shooter from entering, I have a plan to build a wall of filing cabinets over the door,” she said.

“The reality of this is horrible,” she said. “I’m glad we are doing this drill, because I was not sure what shots would sound like in this hallway. But it’s horrible that we are here on this day preparing this way. I never thought I would be doing this kind of training as a teacher or a parent.”

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