Oakdale Middle School in Medford was surrounded by police and SWAT vehicles early Thursday morning. At the entrance behind the gym, a woman in a white shirt was covered in blood from her neck to her chest with an exit wound between the shoulders.

The blood was fake, but the effect was as sobering as the reality that an active shooter drill involving partners from Eagle Point to Grants Pass was deemed necessary. Early that morning, other volunteers playing victims for the drill were painted up with wounds of varying kinds. Just inside the door, an officer walked by with a cup of coffee, “blood” flowing from his eyes.

On the bleachers in the school gym, volunteers and first responders crowded together, waiting with a static energy akin to backstage before a play. Bret Champion, superintendent of the district, took to the microphone.

“When I woke up this morning, my thoughts were with Uvalde. I was thinking what they wouldn’t have given to have something like this six months, a year, before. They would have given anything to do what we are doing here today. … We can’t control a lot of things. But we can control learning what our muscles can do when we train with them,” he said.

In a courtyard just outside — as the volunteers took their places indoors — Champion said the exercise had been planned over the past year. 

Ron Havniear, director of security, facilities and leadership development for the district, first put on the pressure that the district wasn’t prepared for an active shooter at the schools, especially when it came to reunifying parents with students after the first responders were done, Champion said. But the ball didn’t roll until 19 children and two adults were killed in a shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022.

“Something about that event aligned all the things. Over the last year, we started talking to community partners and planning, ‘How do we avoid something like this?’ We’ve been improving our security as much as we can. One of the things we learned from the (Almeda) fire is that it’s better to do some preparation ahead of time,” he said.

The drill’s purpose is two-fold — district and first responders need to practice dividing responsibility effectively with hundreds of human lives in the balance. But, Champion said, perhaps the most important part is to experience the feeling of this peculiar horror, to gain empathy of those who might in the heat of the chaos leave a door unlocked — this tragic failure was purposely included in one of the scenarios. Even just the sight of the school staged for the drill was powerful for Champion.

“When I walked in the library and saw it, I was overwhelmed. I’m very emotional right now,” he said.

The public safety chaplain equipped with service dog Hero was available for anyone who may have become too emotional during the drill. Some students — with the consent of their families — volunteered to act as the victims along with a number of school district staff, Champion said.

A crowd of V.I.P observers including local emergency management departments, first responders and district staff gathered around an enormous whiteboard, covered with a map of the school and sticky notes for where different scenarios would be waiting for first responders inside — who would be moving in without this information.

In the front of the school, a shooter would aim his gun through a window, firing at police officers rushing to the doors, said Anne Havniear, wife of Ron Havinear and a volunteer for the exercises. In another, a shooter would lie on the ground and pretend to be an injured victim, one would remove his clothes and try to blend in with the evacuation. One shooter would try doors until he finds the accidentally unlocked classroom, then commit suicide when he hears police coming. In one area of the school, there would be some hostages, she said. A vehicle fire scenario near the library would give firefighters something to practice. 

Those role playing as teachers inside would practice lockdown procedures, including sending an email of the number of students inside their classrooms to district staff.

At 9 a.m., it began. The loud speaker came on with a recorded message playing in a loop, stating 911 has been called, law enforcement is coming, the school is now on lockdown. 

An eerie stillness settled over a surreal scene — V.I.P observers watched in a line against a wall facing the doors on the other side of the courtyard. Media including an HBO film crew milled through half the space. Law enforcement was due to respond from where the nearby parking lot met the edge of the building.

Across from the line of observers, the scene played out with a chilling realness. “Parents” ran up to the school, banging on the doors and windows, peering inside and calling out for their children.

“He’s wearing a black mask, flannel shirt, some sort of protective gear,” crackled over the radio from the hips of staff standing around the courtyard.

“Gray T-shirt and shorts, other shooter second floor. He’s moving door-to-door checking. Center west hall, he has entered classroom,” came another transmission.

As the parents prowled the perimeter, police cars began to arrive.

Students appeared on the roof nearby waving their arms and shouting for help. Some police officers escorted parents away from the building, while a group of officers lined up with a lock-picking kit to enter. The vehicle fire sent smoke through the courtyard. 

By 9:21 a.m., multiple officers had entered the building and the Medford SWAT unit arrived with rifles drawn. After sawing through a detached metal door waiting for them just before the real doors, they entered the building. 

A flurry of volunteers came out, one tied with zip ties as the apparent hostage. Several gunshot victims were helped out by SWAT officers, led to the team’s enormous metal personnel carrier, and instructed to apply pressure to their “wounds.”

The observers moved to the other part of the building at just after 9:30, to see the evacuation and paramedic response. The street outside the main entrance was lined with flashing lights from multiple fire trucks and ambulances. On the grass lay tarps in red, yellow and green to triage injured victims.

Paramedics used tarp-like stretchers to carry out the severely injured. A teenage girl leaned back as she lay on the ground, revealing a splatter of “blood” on her stomach. Another man laid on his back with a tube filled with red fluid protruding from his throat. A young woman with a tourniquet above a gruesome wound on her thigh was helped down the stairs with her arm around the shoulders of an EMT. One victim on the red tarp was determined deceased while he waited for hospital transport.

The deceased was asked to stand against the wall near the stairs. He was joined by two others. The drill featured 30 injuries, Ron Havniear said.

By 9:58 a.m., a Mercy Flights helicopter had landed. Injured were largely packed into ambulances and ferried to Asante or Providence, where staff there were waiting to play out their portion of the drill.

Uninjured bystanders were evacuated in lines with their hands up or on their heads, in a scene familiar on TV, as buses from Rogue Valley Transportation District lined up to transport the uninjured away from what was now a crime scene. The helicopter departed for the hospital.

The longest and most apparently muddled part of the event was the reunification between parents and children. The effort began just after 11 a.m., but parents were not actively welcoming their children into their arms until 11:45.

Parents were directed to gather at the fences on either side of the entrance to Spiegelberg Stadium. Folding tables were set up at intervals down both paths where parents were told to check in with their ID ready before they would reunite with their children in the gym. While volunteers acting as angry parents milled outside the fences and demanded information from school district staff, police officers inside the gym were interviewing any students designated as witnesses to the shootings.

As the lunch hour began, parents began to file into one room in the gym where they waited just inside the door for students to be released piecemeal. 

At an after-event press conference, Ron Havniear described the event as an overall success, but he acknowledged there were “tons of lessons learned.”

“These are perishable skills, and we can table-top it, we can talk about it, but it’s different when you get out there and actually do it,” he said.

When asked if first responders felt prepared for this kind of event, Medford police Chief Justin Ivens demurred.

“I don’t know if you’re ever mentally prepared for this kind of scenario, but this kind of preparation offers a mindset. … Not everything went perfectly, that’s how it’s going to be in real life. But everyone kept their heads, they were problem solvers,” he said of officers.

Champion stated the event was unique in its complexity and scale.

“I’ve never seen or heard of anyone else doing anything this large,” he said.

An after-action report about the event will be available in August, but Ron Havniear promised the district would be an “open book” about what it has learned. Other school districts in the valley were present for the drill, he said, and there have been encouraging conversations about coming together as a community against the common threat.

He was confident the drill would become a repeating, possibly even annual event for schools in the Rogue Valley. But he expressed the hope another district would be the host next time.