Disaster Preparedness: What the Batman Theater Shooting and 9/11 have in Common
I grew up in Aurora, Colorado. As a Coloradan, in the wake of the Columbine school shooting that took place in 1999 (when I was 6 years old) schools have been doing active shooter drills. We had tornado drills and fire drills in elementary school, but when I went to middle school, “lock-down drills” were practiced under the desk in classrooms. Or in the science lab storage closets. Or in the gymnasium’s sports offices. Or in the lunch room kitchens. According to the UNLV website, who, sadly and coincidentally, recently had a mass shooting in which several faculty members were murdered, along with all classes for the semester being cancelled, the phases for preparedness are as follows:
1. Prevention
Prevention focuses on preventing hazards from occurring, whether they are natural, technological or caused by humans. Not all hazards are preventable, but the risk of loss of life and injury can be limited with good evacuation plans, environmental planning and design standards.
2. Mitigation
Mitigation is the effort to reduce loss of life and property by lessening the impact of disasters and emergencies. It refers to measures or actions that can prevent an emergency, reduce the chance of an emergency or reduce the damaging effects of unavoidable emergencies. The establishment of building codes and zoning requirements or the creation of defensible space around homes to protect them from wildfire are examples of mitigation efforts.
3. Preparedness
Preparedness is a continuous cycle of planning, organizing, training, equipping, exercising, evaluating and taking corrective action. Training and exercising plans is the cornerstone of preparedness, which focuses on readiness to respond to all hazards, incidents and emergencies. Training and emergency preparedness plans increase a community’s ability to respond when a disaster occurs. Typical preparedness measures include developing mutual aid agreements and memorandums of understanding, training for both response personnel and concerned citizens, conducting disaster exercises to reinforce training and test capabilities, and presenting all-hazards education campaigns.
4. Response
The response phase is a reaction to the occurrence of a catastrophic disaster or emergency. It consists of actions which are aimed at saving lives, reducing economic losses and alleviating suffering. The response phase comprises the coordination and management of resources utilizing the Incident Command System. Response actions may include activating the emergency operations center, evacuating threatened populations, opening shelters and providing mass care, emergency rescue and medical care, fire fighting, and urban search and rescue.
5. Recovery
Recovery consists of those activities that continue beyond the emergency period to restore critical community functions and begin to manage stabilization efforts. The recovery phase begins immediately after the threat to human life has subsided. The goal of the recovery phase is to bring the affected area back to some degree of normalcy, including the restoration of basic services and the repair of physical, social and economic damages. Typical recovery actions include debris cleanup, financial assistance to individuals and governments, rebuilding of roads and bridges and key facilities, and sustained mass care for displaced human and animal populations.
In the news this week, there has been an apartment fire in Racine that has displaced 30 residents from their homes and caused $750,000 in damage. This number does not quantify the pain of having your home with its belongings disappear from your life overnight. The Red Cross is caring for the residents who have been displaced and are being hosted at the Grace Lutheran church nearby. While small in comparison, on Christmas morning last year, in 2022, my apartment was flooded when a water pipe in the apartment above mine broke around 5:30am and flooded both apartments. Our weary but blessed apartment complex maintenance team arrived promptly with the things needed to stop the flood. They cut out wet carpet, and threw up fans to dry the apartment. But my home was no longer habitable. Not unlike the damage described in the paper this week. It was distressing, to say the least. My apartment had no plan for such things, at least no plan wherein I wouldn’t be spending a ridiculous amount of money. I had renters insurance, which spared my mental health in ways I cannot express. But it has taken me almost 10 months of living in my new apartment to settle in. It’s hard to transition when you had no plan in place for such a life event. And I know that I was lucky.
Now, in order to give more information on how we, as communities, can prepare for disasters, I’ve thrown in some resources. And then I’ll explain what the Theater shooting and 9/11 have in common.
OSHA recommends creating an Emergency Action Plan (EAP) that has minimum requirements. Here’s a quote from their website:
“If you are still unsure about whether you are required to have an EAP, use OSHA's Expert System to help you determine your EAP requirements.
AT A MINIMUM, FOR BUSINESSES THAT ARE REQUIRED TO HAVE AN EMERGENCY ACTION PLAN (EAP), THE PLAN MUST INCLUDE:
A preferred method and/or procedures for reporting fires and other emergencies (29 CFR 1910.38(c)(1) and 29 CFR 1926.35(b)(5));
Emergency escape procedures and route assignments, such as floor plans, workplace maps, and safe or refuge areas (example shown below) (29 CFR 1910.38(c)(2) and 29 CFR 1926.35(b)(1));
Procedures to account for all workers after an evacuation, such as designating an assembly location (e.g., a safe/refuge area) (29 CFR 1910.38(b)(4) and 29 CFR 1926.35(b)(3));
evacuation map
Example Evacuation Floor Diagram
Names, titles, departments, and telephone numbers of individuals both within and outside the company to contact for additional information or explanation of duties and responsibilities under the emergency plan (29 CFR 1910.38(c)(6) and 29 CFR 1926.35(b)(6));
Procedures for workers who remain to perform or shut down critical plant operations, operate fire extinguishers, or perform other essential services that cannot be shut down for every emergency alarm before evacuating (29 CFR 1910.38(c)(3) and 29 CFR 1926.35(b)(2)); and
Rescue and medical duties for any workers designated to perform them (29 CFR 1910.38(c)(5) and 29 CFR 1926.35(b)(4)).
IN ADDITION, ALTHOUGH NOT SPECIFICALLY REQUIRED BY OSHA'S EAP STANDARD, OTHER EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS INCLUDE:
Posting emergency numbers in the workplace for the fire brigade, fire department, and other appropriate emergency responders;
Inviting external emergency responders to tour the facility to learn about hazards, the facility’s processes, protective features and systems, and proper actions to take (or not to take) during emergencies. Tours should account for different shifts of firefighters;
Coordinating tours for volunteer firefighters at times that accommodate their work schedules;
Arranging training drills for responders and facility personnel to practice emergency procedures together;
Designating a facility liaison to coordinate with emergency responders and keep them updated if hazards or processes change;
Designating one or more emergency contact persons that are knowledgeable of the facility’s hazards and processes and ensure their contact information is quickly accessible during emergencies;
Designating staff responsible to inventory and maintain emergency equipment and supplies;
Including a description of the alarm system in the emergency plan to be used to notify workers (including disabled workers) to evacuate and/or take other actions. The alarms used for different actions should be distinctive and might include horn blasts, sirens, or even public address systems;
Identifying the site of an alternative facility for communications to be used in the event the primary facility is inaccessible because of emergencies, such as a fire or explosion; and
Storing original or duplicate copies of accounting records, legal documents, worker emergency contact lists, building plans, HAZMAT lists, and other essential records at a secure on-site or off-site location.”
I know it seems daunting and administrative to list out these needs during disaster readiness. It seems like it would waste time, be expensive, and require too many moving pieces to come together to solve the puzzle. I would argue that, from personal experience, when a disaster strikes, those pieces will collide whether you’re ready or not.
The moment I decided to write this post was when I was researching disability and accessibility issues when it comes to transportation. I found this disability news sharing site, which shared news that the EU was figuring out how individuals with disabilities could move between countries. A sort of (small) way to standardize and streamline care for people with disabilities. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a big deal, hence why I was tracking it down. Then out of nowhere, and this happens sometimes, there is a suggested article on the site about the Century 16 movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado. It was written close to the time of the disaster. The article begins with these two sentences: “The State of Colorado, already weary of traumatic events due to the Waldo Canyon and other fires, has also recently endured an extremely violent act on the part of a 24 year old man. The young man entered a theater presenting the new Batman movie, shot and killed a dozen people, and wounded more than fifty others.” So, this article begins, centered but unmentioned, with climate change impacts, and the lesser-known impact of climate change which is the rise in violence. The article goes on to discuss the attempted actions on the part of his mental healthcare providers in getting his threats of violence and unwell urges addressed and monitored in the two weeks prior to his crime.
My very first job was at Century 16 in Aurora, Colorado. I worked there from the day after my 18th birthday until I went off to college 8 months later, when I transferred to the theater closer to my university in Boulder. My coworkers were my friends, and we were and are, very close. The shooting occurred on a Thursday night, because it was a midnight premiere for the Batman Dark Knight movie. Century 16, my movie theater in Aurora, started its midnight premiers around 11:15/11:30 pm. I was staying the night at a friend’s apartment in Aurora because I planned to visit my friend Thursday night, and then go to the club with my Century coworkers that weekend. My friend and I heard sirens about an hour before we headed to bed at around 1:00am. Then as we were settling in, she in her room, me on the couch, by the TV, I got a text from another friend in Aurora. He said there was some kind of terrorist attack at the theater. I accused him of exaggerating, saying it was probably some teenage gang dorks stunting, shooting out the windows or something. He insisted I turn on the news. I turned on the TV, and saw the horror unfolding as more information was being gathered by young local anchors right before my eyes.
Needless to say, our plans to go to the club were cancelled. Instead, I spent the day after zero minutes of sleep frantically texting my friends, crying, and going to my mom to ask her if we could go donate blood. As we were driving to the donation spot, the radio announced that they had reached their capacity on blood donations. We turned around. I was helpless. I turned to what I could do to support my friends. I convinced them to please come to my mom’s house and we could all spend time together as a “Theater Family” which is what we called ourselves. I got all of our Theater Family gathered except for one of our friends who was in shock from the event and decided to drive into the mountains instead. I don’t blame her for wanting to get away. She had been on a fast track to becoming a police officer. She told me about her ride-alongs with police when we worked in the box-office together. Weeks later she would tell me about that night. She was made to wait in-place until the crime scene was secured, and a police officer could help her down the stairs of the auditorium, to step over and around blood puddles and corpses, and to leave the theater she’d left hundreds of times. We all processed the acute shock.
Here is where writing for me gets tough. The screen is blurred with my well of tears. The article says, “Several people are now experiencing trauma or PTSD due to the actions of this young man. Others have been killed, and there are a great many family members and friends of the people who were in the theater that night who are also traumatized. While the President himself has spoken with some of the people affected by the actions of this killer, the trauma may very well affect them for the remainder of their lives.” And this has been the case. The shooting occurred in 2012. Every single year on the anniversary of the shooting, my Facebook is filled with PTSD, collective grief, collective processing of how our lives changed on that day. This shooting is an interesting case study to me for two reasons. 1) it’s personal. 2) it was a success.
The first reason is that it’s personal. I know the building in which it happened, intimately, and I know the staff’s routines, protocols, and safety procedures, pre-shooting. I watched real time interviews that night, and over the next few weeks. I read every report that was made public on the events of that night. I listened to the dispatch recordings of exchanges between first responders that night, I spoke to my friends who were there. I have, as a morbidly curious and empathetic woman, collected primary source accounts from that night. I also witnessed the spread of misinformation, the invention of it, the dispersion, the mutation. This case study demonstrates a worst-case scenario. An absolute nightmare come to reality that too many people in this country have had to reckon with.
The second reason this event is an interesting case study for disaster preparedness is that it is an example of an emergency that was handled well from many standpoints, with very clear and obvious gaps. Yes, you read that right. I know that the grave statistics of deaths, injuries, and survivors’ pain is bleak. The murderer’s conviction of life plus 3,318 years should demonstrate that the crime was horrid. But I will tell you that the more I have read and learned since this incident, this event would have been much worse without the emergency action plan that it had. The reason more people were saved was because of the success of the part of Cinemark’s preparedness protocols, the staff of Century 16, the first responders, Aurora hospitals, and the Aurora resources that provided recovery for the lovely, amazing, brave, and wonderful humans affected, and the documentation of the murderer’s healthcare providers prior to the event. The murderer didn’t fail, the system succeeded in stopping him.
I compare it to 9/11 because of the #2 book that’s recommended below, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes. One section of the book explains how 15,000 were effectively evacuated from the World Trade Center on 9/11. That disaster would have been worse without an emergency action plan. Despite all the things that went wrong that day, that couldn’t possibly have gone right that day, 15,000 lives were saved from implementing some basic action plan steps.
As I finished writing my part in this post, I searched for an hour online to find an illustration from that night. As movie nerds, everyone in town was making the primitive memes for the event Batman themed. The staff who survived the shooting all got matching tattoos from the night. One image that I can recall, but cannot locate, still breaks my heart, in a complicated way, a bittersweet way.
The image was a drawing. With perspective of someone who’s been to the theater before. There’s a Batman poster, above the poster “Now showing” and the poster is The Dark Knight Rises. Running from the front doors of the theater is a police officer. He looks like the security guard who was there on weekends, with a sleeve covering his tattoos on his arms, and a blatant black vest indicating he’s Aurora Police. In his arms is a person. Their legs and arms hang limp. The officer is running, sprinting with this person. Below the cartoon, the caption: “And then the real hero showed up.”
It’s a simple drawing, but it summarizes what happened that night. Police got there first. They caught the shooter, arrested him, and they ran to save the people who had been shot. They stuck the people into their cruisers, they drove them to the hospital. They ran. They responded. They saved so many lives. The cartoonist, Randy Bish, shared that image with the police department after he saw an officer carrying out children that morning after the shooting.
Here is an article comparing the first responders in Aurora to the response to the Parkland shooting.
Please do read the books I list below, or check out the full emergency action plan list on my Goodreads account.
And never forget.
As always, here is a list of book recommendations on the subject of disaster preparedness, disaster responses, how to maintain reason and levelheadedness in times of terror, and, most importantly, how to spare lives from Acts of God.
(My usual disclaimer that I do not recommend books that I haven’t read :P :P)
Personal Effects: What Recovering the Dead Teaches Me About Caring for the Living by Robert A. Jensen “The owner of the world's leading disaster management company chronicles the unseen world behind the yellow tape, and explores what it means to be human after a lifetime of caring for the dead.”
The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why by Amanda Ripley “In this magnificent work of investigative journalism, Ripley retraces the human response to some of history’s epic disasters, from the explosion of the Mont Blanc munitions ship in 1917–one of the biggest explosions before the invention of the atomic bomb–to a plane crash in England in 1985 that mystified investigators for years, to the journeys of the 15,000 people who found their way out of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Then, to understand the science behind the stories, Ripley turns to leading brain scientists, trauma psychologists, and other disaster experts, formal and informal, from a Holocaust survivor who studies heroism to a master gunfighter who learned to overcome the effects of extreme fear.”
Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life by Eric Klinenberg “An eminent sociologist and bestselling author offers an inspiring blueprint for rebuilding our fractured society. Klinenberg takes us around the globe--from a floating school in Bangladesh to an arts incubator in Chicago, from a soccer pitch in Queens to an evangelical church in Houston--to show how social infrastructure is helping to solve some of our most pressing challenges: isolation, crime, education, addiction, political polarization, and even climate change.”
The Disaster Diaries: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apocalypse by Sam Sheridan “Despite an arsenal of skills that puts many to shame, when Sam became a father he was beset with nightmares about being unable to protect his son. With disaster images from movies, books, and the nightly news filling his head, he was slowly being driven to distraction. If a rogue wave hit his beach community, would he be able to get out? If the power grid went down and he was forced outside the city limits, could he survive in the wilderness? And let’s not even talk about plagues, zombie hoards, and attacking aliens. Unable to quiet his mind, Sam decides to face his fears head-on and gain as many skills as possible.”
https://preparecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/What-makes-a-community-disaster-ready-metaevaluation-1.pdf
https://www.unr.edu/organizational-resilience/phases
https://www.osha.gov/emergency-preparedness/getting-started
https://www.acep.org/talem/newsroom/october-20222/medical-response-in-two-active-shooter-scenarios/
