WASHINGTON — It was part of a drill: a man holding a gun, storming through a part of the military facility that houses the Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda on Thursday.
Announcements on loudspeakers and in phone messages told personnel throughout Naval Support Activity Bethesda to shelter in place as the armed individual, dressed in fatigues, entered a building in the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, which sits on the campus of the larger military facility.
The role-playing gunman was tasked with “eliminating” pre-planned victims representing students and faculty members, before attacking other victims at the building’s security office, said Chris Mottler, the university’s security director.
Security forces eventually located the gunman.
“We just feel like we just need to be prepared for these kinds of events,” said the university’s emergency management coordinator James Schwartz, citing the deadly shootings at the Navy Yard, as well as a false alarm at Naval Support Activity Bethesda last July, where what someone thought was the sound of gunshots sparked a massive police response.
However, the military says the exercise was a regularly scheduled one, and not in response to any specific threat.
While the police response was focused on the gunman at the university, the shelter in place order applied to the massive Walter Reed National Military Medical Center as well, presenting a unique challenge for hospital workers.
Chris Gillette, Walter Reed’s command emergency manager, said recent scares at U.S. military facilities and terrorist attacks like the ones in Paris show that “we are very vulnerable” to active shooter scenarios, and need to prepare accordingly.
“We are constantly engaged in exercises throughout the year” to prepare for everything from bomb threats, to dirty bomb attacks, and weather events like the recent snowstorm, he said.
Melissa Knapp, emergency management program manager Walter Reed, said FBI statistics show medical facilities, military facilities, and universities are all at risk. “We have all three of those facilities here at Naval Support Activity Bethesda,” she said, “so we are at risk for an active shooting event.”
