LA CROSSE, Wis. (WXOW) – Salvation Army employees trained on how to respond if an active shooter were to attack their building.
Dave Young co-founded Vistelar which provided the interactive simulation as if it were an actual emergency.
“People live in two worlds,” Young said. “They live in a world that it won’t happen to them and the other world is that if it does they’ll be ready… and those two worlds don’t coexist.”
There is a methodology for escaping an active shooter. Young incorporated a teaching style first, then they had Salvation Army employees practice by running zig-zag lines and de-arming the perpetrator.
“What would I really do? Would I have the confidence to take the gun out of the assailant’s hands?,” Salvation Army Director of Operations Abbey Kronebusch asked. “Would I have that kind of strength? Or would I be the lookout? Or the person helping with the window that we broke?”
It is all an effort to keep her employees safe.
“Work should not be a place that you go to and you’re afraid,” Kronebusch said.
The organization prepared for the worst by practicing to strategically make it harder for a shooter to harm their workers.
