Fontana Police Corporal Joe Ferreira stands nears as San Bernardino County Firefighters attend to a mock victim during an active shooter drill at Water of Life Community Church in Fontana Wednesday. San Bernardino County Fire, San Bernardino County Sheriff and Fontana Police Department conducted a joint Escalated Threat Drill.
FONTANA >> The prospect of donning ballistic helmets and vests, like a SWAT team, was unsettling for many San Bernardino County firefighters.
Then Dec. 2 happened.
“For us to put on protective gear was a difficult thing to wrap our heads around,” said firefighter and spokesperson Jeremy Kern. But the San Bernardino shooting “really brought it home for our personnel.”
“We’re talking minutes and seconds here,” Kern said. “The sooner we get firefighter/paramedics in to stop bleeding, to triage and to extract victims, the better chance we have of survivability.”
Getting firefighters to victims sooner rather than later takes more than putting them in body armor. It requires police protection and unprecedented coordination between the two agencies. So beginning earlier this year, county fire began a series of coordinated law enforcement and firefighting training in the communities it serves.
For 10 days beginning June 13, San Bernardino County Fire Department and Fontana Police Department, assisted by San Bernardino County sheriff’s personnel, have trained at Fontana’s Water of Life Community Church to respond together to escalated threat situations such as a shooting. Friday will conclude the exercise.
On Wednesday, the training was opened to the media. Outside, incident command centers were set up in the parking lot. Inside, 28 volunteers played the victims, from those with no injuries to those who perished.
Sara Morning, a nurse educator and EMS technician with county fire, applied simulated wounds as a makeup artist. She made it appear that a bullet had grazed the neck of Kalia Flores, 13, of Beaumont, who also was told to act as though she had a hurt knee. Another volunteer was instructed to stay near a $98,000 mannequin that simulated a victim with an amputated leg and other injuries.
During each round of training, waves of officers fanned through the building at 7625 East Ave. in search of a gunman who preceded them, firing blanks from an M-16. After the gunman moved to the second floor, diamond formations of armored firefighters, surrounded by armed officers, followed and started triaging the first-floor wounded under police protection.
They moved upstairs only after that floor was deemed safe enough for them to proceed.
In between rounds, police and firefighters gathered in a large circle to discuss what worked well and what needed improvement.
Former practices kept firefighters away from “hot” scenes for their own protection, delaying possible life-saving efforts, Kern said.
County fire began looking into acquiring ballistics gear in March 2014, Kern said. The move was prompted by news of firefighters in other areas being attacked or threatened while performing their duties.
It took the department almost two years to acquire the funding — a $415,000 Homeland Security grant — and to assemble a program and policies. The money went toward the training and the purchase of 400 vests and helmets, each set assigned to a firefighter.
In Fontana, even though the county provides fire protection to the city, the city raised its own money to purchase 30 sets of protective gear.
County fire will continue to roll out the training in communities it serves, Kern said. It’s already done so in Hesperia and Victorville, for example, and Yucca Valley and Needles are slated for coming months.
Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren attended Wednesday’s training to interview organizers for a community television show and to witness firsthand her city’s police and fire departments learning to better work together.
“Doing this kind of exercise makes sure we stay on our mission (as a city) to keep people safe,” she said. In the long run, she added, the training will benefit not only Fontana but the region, with Fontana serving as a “guiding light.”
“It can happen at any time,” Warren said.