There’s a well known adage to “hope for the best but plan for the worst.” I think it’s safe to say that many of us have given a lot of emphasis to the first part, but have readily forgotten to properly prepare ourselves according to the second part. I, too, counted myself in this group of the hopefully unprepared until an experience one Saturday night helped change my perspective.
The mall was relatively crowded with shoppers taking advantage of the holiday season sales when a fight broke out between customers in the food court. No one is exactly sure what happened during the fight, and police did not find any evidence of gunfire, but someone heard shots fired. Patrons and employees alike were already a bit on edge from an armed robbery from the previous week that left a security guard with a gunshot wound, so it did not take much for the mall to jump into active-shooter mode. People quickly began rushing out of the food court to the nearest exits, stores went into lock down, and employees hid customers in the fitting rooms.
All the way on the other side of the mall I was standing in line at the entrance to Macy’s with my mother and younger sister when crowds of people rushed in yelling things like “Get out!” and “There’s a shooter!” Within a split second of processing, we dropped what we were holding and ran out as well. At one point I hesitated only to be urgently waved ahead by an employee crouched behind a display.
When we finally reached a concrete divider island at the edge of the parking lot and decided it was safe to stop running, we were struck by the absence of sirens and police involvement. Although anyone in that parking lot would have told you that there was a shooting, the only action was cars hurriedly driving away–even if that meant driving over concrete dividers or people’s feet in order to do so. I myself was a bit stranded with my terrified fourteen year-old sister, as my mother (who had fallen on the way out but pushed us to keep running) and the car keys were still somewhere inside the mall.
It wasn’t until later after we calmed down and were sitting over frozen yogurt that we heard it was all a false alarm. Still, I think we can all take some crucial lessons from my “low stakes” learning experience.
Maybe it’s just me, but even with all the recent attacks, both international and domestic, I still harbored a deep feeling of “it’s happening to someone else.” In the car on the way to the mall my sister made a comment about ISIS and I didn’t give it much thought as something that was immediately related to my life. Although I may be uneducated and hold uninformed opinions on the matter, gun control hasn’t exactly been in the forefront of my mind.
But standing in that parking lot, I was suddenly hit by the realization that those perceptions have to change fast. Even though it was a false alarm, it did take away the [false] sense of security I’d been clinging to. Personally, I’m not sure that that’s such a bad thing.
After decompressing, my family sat down for a meeting to go over our emergency plan for the future, if, God forbid, it is ever needed. Although it was scary to be faced with questions of “What would you have done if you got separated from your sister”? and listening to admonitions not to stop to help up my mother if a next time arose, I’m glad we had this practice round of an experience we hope to never repeat. I feel safer and better prepared to go out into this crazy world in which we’re now living.
I strongly urge you, readers, not to wait for a practice round. All that adrenaline isn’t good for you and my mother is still sore from the bruises she sustained when she fell. Sit down with your family and discuss an emergency plan. Please get yourself up to date on active shooter protocol in your communities, towns and schools. Not everything is intuitive, and logical reasoning may not be the first thing that comes to mind when split-second decisions need to be made.
“Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.” Hopefully our emergency action plan will never actually have to be put into action, and all of the extra precautions we now plan to take will remain just that–extra. Yes, our davening and “hoping for the best” should take on extra meaning. But let’s not forget to do the second part of the adage and “plan for the worst” so that even if the worst does come, we can still do our part to have the best possible outcome.