NFPA Journal - July/August 2018 - 14

Dispatches

SAFE AND
SECURE

IN A WORLD THREATENED BY ACTIVE SHOOTERS,
NFPA TAKES ANOTHER LOOK AT HOW TO BALANCE
BUILDING FIRE AND LIFE SAFETY WITH SECURITY
By Angelo Verzoni
y all conceivable measures, Sandy
Hook Elementary School was
secure. The building, in the town of
Newtown, Connecticut, had locked
doors and a system for signing in.
But on December 14, 2012, that sense of security
was turned around. All it took was a bullet from a
20-year-old shooter's gun to shatter a glass wall in
the entryway of the school to breach security-a
breach that would lead to the deaths of 26 people
inside the school, 20 of them young children.
"We had security in place, we had plans in
place," said Natalie Hammond, who was a lead
teacher at Sandy Hook at the time and who was
shot multiple times in the incident. "But the
shooter had other plans that day."
Hammond, now a principal at another Connecticut school, was one of about 40 people who met at
NFPA headquarters in early May for the Building
Safety and Security Workshop. The aim of the
workshop was to make headway in figuring out

HOW SECURE
IS SECURE?
Recent workshop
attendees met at
NFPA headquarters
to discuss ways to
balance fire and life
safety with security
and other concerns.

14 | NFPA JOURNAL * J U L Y /A U G U S T 2 0 1 8

ADOPT NFPA 3000
Less than two weeks before the workshop, NFPA
3000™ (PS), Active Shooter/Hostile Event Response
(ASHER) Program, was released to the public. The
provisional standard provides a roadmap for first
responders, medical professionals, and others as
they prepare for, respond to, and recover from
active shooter and other hostile events, such as
what happened at Sandy Hook. NFPA Journal
covered the release of NFPA 3000 in "Writing History" in the May/June issue.
At the workshop, participants agreed that raising awareness of this document and getting buy-in
from communities would be key components of
enhancing first responder preparation for, and
response to, such events. While NFPA 3000 isn't
a code or standard for the built environment, it
includes recommendations for equipping buildings with tools, such as bleeding control kits,
that can save lives in the event of an attack. "It's
the people right there on scene [who need to]

iSTOCKPHOTO

BUILDING SAFETY & SECURITY

how to balance fire and life safety with other concerns such as security, green-energy policies, and
comfort. The issue is one of the most challenging
problems facing building and safety professionals
today, not just in schools but also in other public
and commercial buildings. Many well-intentioned
solutions-such as using aftermarket locks to keep
intruders out, or prohibiting students from exiting
during a fire alarm for fear they become easier
targets for attackers-actually make occupants less
safe, most fire safety officials agree.
The workshop participants, whose backgrounds
ranged from teachers to architects to law enforcement personnel, spent two days discussing how
available technologies and building systems can
be used safely to enhance security in different
occupancies, and the complications of preparing
occupants for active shooter and other hostile
events. The result of the discussion-a list of
recommendations on how to move forward with
optimizing building safety and security-is a
report available online at nfpa.org/security. The
website also includes the report from a 2014 NFPA
workshop that focused exclusively on educational
occupancies.
The new report offers some relatively obvious
suggestions-such as preventing unsafe, aftermarket door-locking devices and following NFPA 101®,
Life Safety Code®-while also laying the groundwork for more innovative ideas. Three of the
recommendations, for instance, involve occupant
and responder behavior and are featured below.

http://www.nfpa.org/security

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - July/August 2018