Running a Live Drill Without Traumatizing Your Team

The drill that hurt the staff who were supposed to be helped.

In the years following the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in 2012, school districts and organizations across the country expanded their use of active shooter drills. Many of these drills were designed with the intention of preparing people for an event like the one at Sandy Hook. Many of them succeeded in building capability.

Some of them also produced documented harm. Drills with unannounced actors firing blanks in hallways. Drills that simulated the acoustic environment of a shooting event. Drills where teachers were shot with pellet guns or experienced simulated assaults. The research that followed showed meaningful trauma symptoms in students, teachers, and staff who had experienced the more intense versions.

In 2021, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and others called for fundamental reform of how active shooter drills are conducted. The American Psychological Association and other mental health professional organizations published guidance on how drills should be designed to produce training effect without trauma.

This is the context in which any organization planning live drills should operate. The intention is honorable. The execution has to be careful.

The five principles of a responsible live drill.

1. Announcement

Participants know the drill is occurring. They know approximately when, what kind of drill it is, and what to expect. Unannounced drills with high stress content are not training. They are events done to people.

Fire alarm drills are a useful exception, because the fire alarm itself is the signal, the response is simple and well-rehearsed, and the stress level is modest. Fire drills have been normal practice in American buildings for generations precisely because the content is manageable.

2. Consent

Participants have the ability to opt out without judgment. For most staff training drills, opt-out is usually used rarely, but the option should exist and be known. The consent principle respects the autonomy of each participant and allows people who are dealing with personal circumstances (recent trauma, mental health episodes, family crises) to care for themselves.

3. Graduated intensity

A team’s first drill should be low-intensity. A walkthrough of evacuation routes. A practice of the lockdown position. The basic communication sequence. As the team gains experience and confidence, drill complexity can increase. Starting with full high-intensity simulation is wrong. It produces panic, not learning.

4. Psychological safety

The environment before, during, and after the drill should feel safe. Facilitators should be calm. The tone should be instructional, not theatrical. Participants who are showing signs of acute distress should be supported, not pushed through. The drill should feel like practice, because that is what it is.

5. Debriefing

Every drill ends with a structured conversation. What worked. What did not. What we learned. What we will do differently next time. The debrief is where learning is consolidated and where any participant experiencing distress has an opportunity to process with support.

Types of drills and when each is appropriate.

Not all drills are equal. Different drill types serve different purposes.

Walkthrough drills

Low intensity. Participants physically walk through the response to a scenario, narrated by the facilitator. “If this happened, you would go here. If that happened, you would call this person.” No simulation. No pressure.

Walkthrough drills are the right first drill for any organization. They are also appropriate for organizations that have had staff changes and need to orient new team members.

Evacuation drills

Moderate intensity. The alarm is activated, the facility is evacuated according to plan, and the response is observed. Used widely for fire response. Can be adapted for other scenarios (severe weather, bomb threat, gas leak).

Evacuation drills are appropriate once or twice per year for most organizations and are usually announced.

Lockdown drills

Moderate intensity. Staff and participants practice the specific lockdown protocol: securing doors, moving to denied-access positions, silencing devices, maintaining calm. Typically announced, typically brief.

Lockdown drills are appropriate for schools, daycares, senior living facilities, and churches that have active threat protocols.

Medical response drills

Variable intensity. A scenario involving injury or medical emergency is introduced and the team practices triage, care, and handoff to EMS. Can range from tabletop to simulated scene depending on the team’s readiness.

Full integration drills

High intensity. Multiple elements are combined: active threat, evacuation, medical response, law enforcement arrival, reunification. These are the most valuable drills for mature teams but should only be run after significant foundational practice.

What we do not recommend

Unannounced high-intensity active shooter drills with stress simulation, simulated gunfire, or actors playing attackers are not appropriate for most community organizations. The research is clear that the training value does not outweigh the psychological cost in these formats. Churches, daycares, senior living facilities, and nonprofits should conduct drills in the announced, consent-based, graduated-intensity manner described above.

The Southwest Florida context.

Our region has specific considerations for drill design:

• Seasonal population. Winter attendance swells for many organizations. Drills run only during the off-season may not practice the full team that would actually be present during an event.
• Weather integration. Florida drills benefit from incorporating severe weather scenarios alongside active threat scenarios. The drills that practice both build more comprehensive readiness.
• Multi-generation populations. Churches and senior living facilities often have elderly participants whose physical capabilities affect drill design. Evacuation drills for an 80-year-old congregation look different from drills at an office building. Drill design should respect the actual population.
• Outdoor facilities. Many Southwest Florida facilities include significant outdoor components (courtyards, playgrounds, patios). Drill scenarios should incorporate these spaces, not default to interior-only rehearsal.

The Hurricane Ian lessons for drills.

After Hurricane Ian, Southwest Florida organizations rethought their drill portfolios. Several organizations that had run severe weather drills before the storm found their protocols largely held up. Those that had not often discovered during the real event that their plans had gaps that would have surfaced in practice.

The post-Ian recommendation pattern has become consistent. Every organization should include severe weather scenarios in its drill rotation. Frequency depends on risk profile. For coastal and low-lying facilities, annual rehearsal is a reasonable minimum. For inland facilities, every two years may be sufficient.

The verse names readiness as a spiritual discipline. The operational parallel is immediate. Readiness is not something that happens only in moments of expected stress. It is a posture, developed through practice, that persists into unexpected moments. Drills are one of the practices that produce that posture.

The drill rhythm that works.

For most small and mid-size organizations in Southwest Florida:

• Quarterly tabletop exercises (as foundational practice)
• Semi-annual evacuation drill (announced, structured)
• Annual lockdown drill (announced, graduated intensity)
• Annual full-integration drill for mature security teams only
• Ad-hoc walkthrough drills whenever new staff onboard or facilities change

This rhythm produces capability without burnout. Teams stay engaged. Improvements compound year over year.

What the debrief must cover.

Every drill debrief should address:

• What the team did well
• What specific gaps or problems emerged
• How participants felt (emotional response matters and affects future readiness)
• What protocols need updating based on the drill
• What individual participants need to follow up on
• When the next drill is scheduled

The debrief takes 15 to 30 minutes. Skipping it cuts the learning value of the drill in half.

The P23 approach to live drills.

When we facilitate live drills for client organizations, we bring explicit attention to the responsible principles described above. Our drills are:

• Always announced, with clear communication to participants about what to expect
• Calibrated to the team's current readiness, not the maximum possible intensity
• Designed with opt-out pathways and awareness of individual participant circumstances
• Facilitated in a calm, instructional tone
• Followed by a structured debrief that captures both tactical lessons and participant well-being
• Documented in a written after-action that becomes part of the ongoing program record

The drills produce learning. They do not produce harm. Participants leave feeling more capable and more ready, not more traumatized.

The responsibility of whoever calls the drill.

The decision to run a drill carries real responsibility. It affects participants, their families, and the broader community perception of the organization. Organizations considering live drills should think carefully about whether they are ready, whether their team is ready, and whether they have the facilitation capability to conduct the drill responsibly.

If your organization in Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Naples, or Port Charlotte is ready to incorporate live drills into its training program, we would be glad to help design the progression that will produce real capability without harm. The conversation starts with understanding where your organization actually is, and what drill sequence makes sense from there.