AST Digital Magazine June 2017 Digital-June | Page 20

Volume 13
death in a school since 1957.
That tells me all the codes, training and practice
fire drills have paid off.
Couldn’t and shouldn’t the same hold true for ac-
tive shooter situations or other types of terrorist
attacks, for example, vehicle or backpack bomb-
ings? We could easily design buildings and
rooms within so that there are always at least
two evacuation routes.
INSERT NEW IMAGE HERE OF HSS PLAN IF
RECEIVED....
June 2017 Edition
earthquakes but not for active shooters or other
forms of terrorism.
Creativity versus Safety and Security
A few months ago, I was meeting with a very dear
friend and she told me that as the Chief Security
Officer for a very large multi-national company,
the thing that kept her up at night was the fact
that since interior designers have been creating
office spaces that promote the free flow of ideas
and creativity, there were no more walls to hide
behind and because of that the company’s em-
ployees were basically “sitting ducks” during an
active shooter event.
This would allow people to escape the shooter,
instead of hiding in the bathroom and waiting to
be murdered or, at best, to fight to overwhelm the
attacker. Essentially, we’ve told and trained folks
to be sitting ducks.
That I know of, no one involved during the ini-
tial phase of an active shooter incident has been
shot in the back while trying to escape. I may
be wrong here but I’ve not heard of anyone. But
I have heard of people being killed while they
waited for the police to neutralize the threat.
I believe the notion that people should hunker-
down until the cavalry arrives is ludicrous.
Instead we should be teaching people to RUN-
RUN-RUN. But in order to do that, we have to
design buildings so that people can RUN no
matter what. Which means every internal space
should have at least, two exits. Preferably oppo-
site each other to afford people the opportunity
to get away.
In the RUN-HIDE-FIGHT approach we address
what the victim should do. Police departments
have addressed what they should do but we
haven’t address what the “environment” should
do.
Legislators have addressed how the environ-
ment should react to certain threats, like fire and
Office spaces that promote the free flow of ideas and creativ-
ity, leave little options to take shelter in an active shooter or
other type of emergency situation
I guess there’s a trade-off between inventiveness
and protection. I don’t think there has to be. I
think we can do both.
As just one example, I believe we can com-
partmentalize transit spaces, such as hallways,
stairwells, much in the same way as ships have
bulkheads that compartmentalize the interiors of
the ship in case of fire or flooding. We could do
the same with these transit spaces and make it
so that once a “bad guy” is in this space we can
seal him or her off so that there is no freedom of
movement.
By restricting the freedom of movement haven’t
we in essence prevented the threat from caus-
ing more victims? Obviously, some technical
20