A bomb threat at West Middle School Thursday turns out to be false. But it's just one more example of the emergency scenarios first responders have to be ready for. New technology is helping emergency workers keep us safer.
For the third time this year a bomb threat sets students and parents on edge at Rockford's West Middle School.
"It's kind of scary to be in school," says West student Deven Cooper.
West mother Melanie Guse adds, "I worry every day, but that's part of being a parent. I always tell him I love him when I leave him off."
Rockford school administrators and police searched the school for an hour, without interrupting classes, and determined the threat was false.
In light of recent violent incidents, emergency responders are taking every threat seriously and working constantly to prepare for and prevent future tragedies.
"Develop your plans ahead of time, so that it's not after the fact, that before the event you know how to communicate, who to communicate to, what information to provide, what kind of precautions to take at your school to prevent any furtherance of problems," says Don Kauerauf of the Illinois Terrorism Task Force.
School security is one of the topics up for discussion at a three-day conference for first responders being held at Cliffbreakers in Rockford.
"These people are able to see the latest equipment and where this might be located, there's not that many bomb squads in the state of Illinois," says Denny Lolli, Director of the Winnebago County Emergency Preparedeness and Response Agency.
The Homeland Security Unified Command Post is called in for major emergencies and equipped with the essentials... "You gotta have coffee"... for managing a disaster.
Colin Fulrath of the Jo Daviess County Sheriff's Department adds, "The police chief, fire chief, the mayor, the incident coordinator whatever can have a meeting away from everybody else and make a decision on how they're going to handle that incident. They still keep contact through the radios on board on what's happening on the scene. With the command post you can't be right at the incident, you have to be some ways away, that's why they have this zoom in."
It's just one of the tools helping responders zero in on keeping us safer.
Emergency workers say streamlining communication is one of the biggest tools making responding easier. First responders in Illinois can now all tap into one radio frequency to talk to each other when a major disaster occurs.
There's a new state-run website, www.ready.illinois.gov. Information will be posted there when an emergency occurs, telling us how we can react, how we can protect ourselves and what we can do to clean up in an event like a flood.