LITTLETON, Colo. -- There were no set guidelines for it, no handbook to follow.
The situation was new -- two teenage gunmen armed with assault weapons, ammunition and pipe bombs had entered Columbine High School and opened fire. Some students were shot. Others were trapped in the school with the gunmen.Fifteen people died last April, including the gunmen.
"When you're dealing with a case like Columbine, there is no textbook to fall back on," said Jefferson County sheriff's spokesman Steve Davis. "We couldn't go on the scene and say, 'Last time we had a situation like this.'"
Soon, the questions came. Should officers have moved through the building faster? Should they have focused more on finding the gunmen than on helping the injured?
In the four months since the massacre, police across the country have begun to alter training procedures based on lessons learned from Colombine.
At a recent four-day police seminar in Palm Beach, Fla., participants re-enacted the Columbine tragedy, using fake blood, screaming students, screeching fire alarms and paint-ball guns.
The Austin, Texas, Police Department recently started a program called Homicide in Progress for officers who are among the first to respond, said Paul Ford, a senior police officer and SWAT team member.
"It teaches them to recognize situations like Columbine and gives the officers some options on what they can do . . . whether it is rescuing victims or going directly to the source of the threat," he said.
At Columbine, police and emergency response crews descended on the school within minutes of 911 calls.
Lt. Terry Manwaring, a Jefferson County SWAT team commander who arrived within 12 minutes, found some students, who quickly sketched a layout of the school.
A hastily assembled team of 10 officers from three agencies approached the building 20 minutes later, using a firetruck as a shield, Manwaring said.
During the next 1 1/2 hours, three SWAT teams made up of nearly 50 officers from four jurisdictions gingerly walked through debris-filled hallways as explosions echoed, fire alarms blared, water flowed from sprinkler systems and emergency strobe lights flashed.
They found hundreds of terrorized students, many barricaded in classrooms and closets.
Manwaring said they received a lot of false information: There were as many as eight gunmen; snipers were on the roof; killers were hiding in ceilings or in heating ducts or trying to mingle with escaping students.
The officers agree one of their biggest problems was communication because different agencies operated on radios set on different frequencies.