Middle school holds large-scale lockdown drill

FIRTH, Idaho (KIFI) - Firth Middle School students had a lockdown training Wednesday with help from about 30 personnel from the Bingham County Sheriff’s Department.

Local News 8 visited the school to learn how the drill works, why it's needed and its effect on the students.

Firth School District Superintendent Basil Morris explained how the Bingham County Sheriff's Department runs the lockdown drill.

"The operation is they will enter the school, remove our students through our lockdown drill, transfer them to the high school,” he said. “So they can kind of see the whole transition of what would happen in case of an emergency here at the school."

Morris says the school does monthly lockdown drills with its students, but this one is on a larger scale. The students have been trained throughout the year for this day.

"Today is kind of a culmination of all that is after the fact, if there is an incident, what do we do? And this is where we come in and we'll have swat teams here,” Bingham County Sheriff’s Dept. Lieutenant Gary Yancey said. “We'll have other agencies. They'll come in and actually do an evacuation of the school, made sure the kids are out safe."

With so many trainings and such a big one today, Morris shared why they are necessary.

"It's the state of the nation, right? We try to prepare ourselves for whatever can happen. We hope, obviously, nothing ever happens here, but you just never know. We always want to be prepared. We always want our kids to feel safe and secure and that they understand what to do in these situations."

These kinds of trainings are important, but they can sometimes frighten children in the process of teaching them how to be safe. Lieutenant Yancey says they try not to make the trainings too realistic. Firth Middle School also makes efforts to make sure the students are okay before, during and after the drill.