An Exercise In Patience: Hurry Up And Wait!

This morning the library was closed while campus security and the police ran a coordinated exercise code named Exercise Hogwarts. Myself, with diverse other staff and students volunteered to act as victims while three “gunmen” ran amok in the library with guns and bombs.

It started with a lot of hurry up and wait; there was the initial briefing then followed by hanging around waiting to be told what to do. We were split into groups and placed on different floors. Some of the volunteers were tasked with being corpses, while others were told to “flee: at the right moment into the AOS teams. I ended up hanging around on the second floor.

While there was a feeling of falseness around the exercise many of us were starting to feel edgy, as we were told to ring the police/security and make reports of bombs and gunmen. The heart raced a lot faster when the constables playing the gunmen arrived with their large armaments. When they started firing them you couldn’t help but jump. Especially when they fired the really loud one!

I ended up being told to flee down the staircase and report the position of the gunmen to the AOS squad at the bottom of the stairs. After they raced off I found myself in the deserted first floor with no idea what to do. I had been told to follow instructions but none were given. In the end I wondered back up the “non-active” stairwell and rejoined the experience.

Moving between the floors was a little nerve wrecking as there were by now a lot of gun noises, and screams echoing through the building. The atrium to the library was awash in a sea of black masked men holding what looked like assault rifles.

I ended up on the fifth floor waiting to be rescued. This ended up being a long wait as well, even after being rescued. We were corralled into a corner and had to wait for a clear exit. One of the student volunteers had been “shot” in the leg and they decided to put her in a stretcher. Unfortunately we were above the “explosives” and ended up having to wait for them to be cleared. The poor girl lay on the floor in the stretcher for nearly 40 minutes (although to great amusement they let her up for a quick toilet break).

The police shifted between smiling and joking a little, and “role-playing”. This kept everyone on edge a bit as we tried to relax and wait to be “evacuated”. For me the most disturbing thing was being marched out of the building and having to have our eyes faced down and hands on the person in fronts shoulders.

After it was done, the food was nice, but I felt that maybe they could have had some counsellors on hand to circulate and check on the volunteers. The whole experience was both exciting and yet disturbing and I can see how it could have upset those who volunteered.

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