BAY MINETTE, Ala. (WKRG) — It’s as close to a mass shooting as you can get without anyone getting hurt. Today a combination of law enforcement, EMTs, nursing students, and other first responders were part of a massive training drill in Bay Minette. This mass shooting training started with members of the Baldwin Area Mutual special response team storming a building in tactical gear.

“It shows you where your deficiencies are, strong points as well and where do you need to focus?” said Team Commander and Spanish Fort Police Chief John Barber. Inside chaos as nursing students tend to the wounded. Some stay. Some go. All split-second decisions by the people would respond to such a tragedy.

“Realize having to go through and triage everyone, deciding who has to go to the ER and who has to stay behind,” said nursing student JJ Lynd. While Monday was a simulated mass shooting, the skills learned can be use in any event, any tragedy that has a lot of injuries or deaths all at once.

“They have to manage multiple patients all of the time they have to allocate resources like people and equipment and supplies,” said simulation coordinator Carmen Godfrey. Volunteers get bloodied up with makeup before the exercise–to make things as real as possible.

“We hope that it never does but in the event that it does happen they know more of what to do,” said EMT Megan McGuire. While fear is hard to fake–the screaming and confusion capture the tension and chaos of a real disaster.