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Police and Weber School District team up for emergency transport drill

Posted at 5:04 PM, Mar 02, 2016
and last updated 2016-03-02 19:04:13-05

OGDEN, Utah -- School kids in Weber County practiced for an event every parent and teacher hopes will never happen: a lock down.

The purpose of the drill is to help school and police personnel practice getting children to safety and reuniting them with their parents.

Reading, writing and arithmetic took a back seat to lock down, evacuate and reunite in Weber County Wednesday.

It was a huge undertaking involving a cast of hundreds and requiring an incredible amount of coordination between school officials, law enforcement and families.

"Today we're kind of putting it all together with the reunification, the transport and the lock down all together,” said Nate Taggart with the Weber School District.

Taggart said that's how this mock disaster drill differs from others. After securing the more than 800 students at Kanesville elementary, school officials and law enforcement from all across northern Utah then coordinated their transportation to a secure, off-site location several miles away.

In the event of situations like an active shooter, a bomb threat or a natural disaster: communicating with parents about where to safely pick up their children is a part of the equation that sometimes is overlooked.

“Hopefully we'll never need to use this, but we're practicing in case something happens; that could be an earthquake, that could be a fire, multiple things we'd be using this evacuation for,” Taggart said.