On a glorious Tuesday morning this week, James MacKenty slid the family convertible up to an Airport Mobil gas pump in West Tisbury.
Mr. MacKenty, an Edgartown resident, graduated from Martha's Vineyard Regional High School two weeks ago. He is looking forward to beginning school as an auto technician in September. Life is good.
The imagined tragedy was a Columbine-like shooting at a public high school. Photo by Lynn Christoffers
Forty-eight hours earlier, however, Mr. MacKenty was running in mock terror away from his high school during the filming of an emergency preparedness training film that recreated the horror of school shootings like the one that occurred in Columbine, Colorado, in 1999.
For Mr. MacKenty, his brother, Brian, and nearly 80 other Islanders, including teachers, law enforcement and emergency personnel, the mock film being shot by the Emergency Film Group (EFG) provided an opportunity to see emergency planning and high-quality moviemaking firsthand.
EFG is a safety training film company headquartered on Cooke Street in Edgartown. The company has shot several safety-training films on the Island, including a film on hazardous materials in 2006. EFG safety training films feature local members of police, fire, and EMT squads.
This week, the company filmed scenes depicting preparedness training for school personnel, two "event" situations and post-event crisis management situations at several locations, including the high school and at Katama.
Edgartown patrolman Jamie Craig commands the Island's recently formed tactical response, or SWAT, team. He was grateful for the opportunity to train his group in real-time situations.
"We know the school layout completely now and we got repetition of training of response techniques," Mr. Craig said. "While there is dispute about whether patrolmen should go into a building or wait for SWAT personnel, an expert in active response situations where shooting is still going on has said that someone is shot every 15 seconds in the incident. Typically, SWAT response time is 20 minutes."
To that end, patrolmen are now trained to enter in a team and attempt to neutralize shooters, he said, adding that in rural locations, where U.S. crime is rising two and one half percent faster than in urban areas, it may not be possible to gather the optimum four-man team quickly.
In a scene shot at the Katama airfield, Mr. Craig was cast as a lone patrolman who enters a simulated "one-room schoolhouse" to quell a shooting. "In these situations you have to put yourself in peril, but in remote locations, it's hard to get four cops there fast," he said. "EFG wants to expose people to the need that you may have to go in alone and how to do it best."
EFG has developed a group of consultants drawn from active SWAT members of police departments around the country. "We will review the rough cut of the film with them to ensure that the techniques and tactics are correct," Mr. Craig said. "Many small police departments can't afford to bring in experts for training. Films like these are very important training tools for them."
Gordon Massingham, president of Emergency Film Group, said his 31-year-old company has been a step ahead of current events. "We had landed in Phoenix for a film shoot when the Oklahoma City bombing occurred," he said. "We went there and realized that the protocols for terrorism were similar to those of hazardous materials."
The company released "Response to Anthrax Threats" in August 2001, before the national anthrax scare. The film brought EFG to the attention of public security officials, Mr. Massingham said. Currently, EFG has more than 14,000 clients for more than 200 films. Most of the films serve as training tools for communities, schools, and public safety agencies from the Secret Service and FBI to small town America emergency response personnel. Films cost between $50,000 and $100,000 to produce. "We have grown to love emergency response personnel - cops, firefighters, EMTs," Mr. Massingham said. "They are people who will do anything to help people in trouble. They don't care if you're young, old, thin or fat. They just want to help," Mr. Massingham said on the set of a mock press conference this week.
In that scene, Captain Donald Rose of the Dukes County Sheriff's Department played a stony-faced officer dealing with initial press questions after an imaginary shooting incident. While the situation was obviously a movie scene, a macabre real-life quality attended the scene, as Mr. Rose listed the three dead and eight wounded, including two "shooters" that he said were "eliminated."
Vineyard Haven resident Michael Weston followed. He played the school principal, providing details on available community and grief counseling resources, naming real Island organizations that would participate in the event of a tragedy.
The irony of the mock film about tragedies that have actually occurred in other places was not lost on Mr. MacKenty. "I can't imagine anything like that ever happening here, but I guess it's a possibility," he said. "There's always the possibility. If it did, it would be scary. Very scary."
