Eastside organization plans, practices emergency response

By Lisa Heyamoto
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

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A near-tragedy stunned Bellevue last week when a teacher took a gun away from a Newport High School student as he apparently tried to take his life at school. And though no one was injured, the questions and fears of the community remain.

"It's just another example of how it can happen in our community," said Patti Skelton, executive director of Youth Eastside Services (YES), a nonprofit organization that offers counseling to parents and youth. "Bad things can happen to a good community, too."

Had the situation escalated, Skelton's organization is one of many on the Eastside that would have been a resource available to kids and parents.

The Eastside Disaster Counseling Network for Kids was formed after the 1999 Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colo., moved the nation toward taking preventive action against school shootings.

Eastside police and fire departments as well as school districts formed various plans to deal with such a situation. But Skelton wondered what would happen next, after the chaos subsided and emergency personnel had done their job. Who would come in and help the kids and parents deal with their grief? And how would it work?

So YES spearheaded an effort to assemble an informal network of Eastside agencies that could offer coordinated counseling.

Agencies involved include YES; Children's, Overlake and Evergreen hospitals; Bellevue schools; and chaplains from some police and fire departments. The group meets monthly to work on a response system and has periodic drills to ensure the plans will work out.

"It's helped us build a relationship amongst all of us so that we're ready," Skelton said. "We've had to learn a lot in putting this together."

One of the drills got Skelton out of bed at 6:30 a.m. for a mock call from a local police department. (The group members don't know exactly what time the drill will occur or what the situation will be — much like a real-life occurrence.) On that particular day, the team mobilized around a mock car accident involving students and teachers from several school districts. Another drill involved a plane crashing into an alternative school, and another a sniper shooting at a school bus.

"Each time we've worked the bugs out a little bit more, which has been good practice for us," she said.
 
Because of the relatively small scale of last week's Newport High incident, the counseling network's response system would likely not have been implemented, Skelton said. The response system is generally reserved for instances that would be larger in scale or would affect people from more than one school district — cases where people would most benefit from a coordinated counseling effort.

Barb Graff, emergency-preparedness manager for the city of Bellevue, said the network allows school districts and police and fire departments to get counselors in without having to shop around when time is short. It allows the counseling agencies, Graff said, to understand how they can fit into the process without trying to do more than they're able.

"Boom, we've got all these different agencies ready and organized," she said. "I can't sing the praises enough."

But as always, Skelton and Graff said, education is part of the effort, too.

"If we can prevent something bad from happening in the first place, that's the best outcome," Graff said.

Lisa Heyamoto: 206-464-2149 or lheyamoto@seattletimes.com

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