FOX 21 News, KQDS-DT

SUPERIOR-Northern Wisconsin authorities tore through an empty University of Wisconsin-Superior dorm as part of a "Mass Casualty Shooting Drill" on Saturday afternoon

Instructors, coming from Waukesha County Technical College (WCTC), said it is preparation for another Virginia Tech or Columbine style shooting.
 
The new training put emergency medical responders in heated scenarios, sometimes under paintball fire, with actors and fellow officers simulating life-threatening injuries.
 
"We had multiple people down inside and an active shooter situation going on at the same time,” Patrol Sergeant Thomas Renz with the Bayfield County Sheriff’s Department said, describing an exercise.

"It's as real as it can get. The adrenaline's flowing and they make it as real as possible,” Renz said.

"It's straight out of the military. You know, straight out of things that have happened during the global war on terror since 2001,” WCTC instructor Chris Cook said.

Cook, helping coordinating the three exercises, said the goal is to get responders to learn a 'meshed' response to these situations - better connecting authorities and Emergency Medical Services for a safer response.
 
"We're actually teaching them to adopt a mindset of how to be tactically minded to ensure that we're not putting other law enforcement providers at risk,” Cook said.

"You know, we all think of Northern Wisconsin and rural communities that everything is all quiet. But it happens as much in the quiet communities as it does in the metropolitan areas,” Renz said.

"Because of this training, we will rise to that occasion,” Renz said.

“If we don't train for it, when the stress hits you, you're going to end up getting fat fingers and they're not going to work properly so we need to do that for the better care of our patients, not just our team, but our victims and suspects as well,” Renz said.

More than two dozen officer–students participated in the trials.