The Center for Community Health may undergo some minor modifications in response to the workplace shooting on the building’s fourth floor earlier this month.
Since the incident, the building-wide safety committee has held meetings to collect input from employees of the various organizations housed within the Center for Community Health. Some of the proposed changes are simple and inexpensive, but they will go a long way toward making people feel safer, said Dr. Alan Melnick, Clark County Public Health director/health officer.
“There’s a lot of things we can do to make people feel more secure,” he said.
That includes adding locks to some of the building’s internal doors, installing panic buttons, requiring key card access to more areas of the building and establishing an internal communications system to alert staff of trouble in the building, Melnick said. The committee is reviewing and prioritizing the recommendations before making changes, he said.
On the afternoon of Feb. 4, police say Deborah A. Lennon, a former Veterans Affairs employee, shot her former supervisor in his office on the building’s fourth floor. Police say another Veterans Affairs employee wrestled the gun from Lennon and detained her until police arrived.
But the incident sent the entire building into lockdown for several hours. During that time, some public health employees took shelter in a copy room on the third floor, Melnick said. The employees closed the door, turned off the lights, silenced their cellphones and stayed quiet. But, Melnick said, the copy room door doesn’t have a lock.
Employees also expressed concerns about the way information was distributed during the incident. Many employees of the health department, located on the third floor, heard the gunshots. While some were able to get out of the building, many took shelter, Melnick said. While hiding, though, nobody knew what was happening, he said.
At Sea Mar Community Health Clinic, which is also on the third floor, nurse manager Lynn Smiley was unaware anything was wrong until someone hollered “active shooter” down the hall.
Smiley would like to have an initial buildingwide announcement of a code word or phrase to alert staff of a problem.
“But I don’t think — specifically if that were to happen again — we would change our process at all,” Smiley said. “How information is relayed, that’s the one thing.”
Shooting response
After Smiley heard “active shooter,” she headed to the clinic’s full waiting room.
Two months earlier, the entire building had participated in an active shooter drill for the first time. During the drill, Smiley learned that those who flee a building usually survive. Those who hide don’t always fare as well, she said.
But without knowing where the shooter was in the four-story building or whether there was more than one shooter, Smiley made a judgment call. She couldn’t send the 30 or so young women, children and people with limited mobility down the stairs to the building’s main entrance, which is on the second floor.
“I just made a quick decision to bring them in instead,” Smiley said. “I just decided to put them somewhere I knew was safe.”
Smiley told everyone to leave their seats in the lobby and come through the doors leading to exam rooms, doors that require key card access to open. She had staff roll down the metal cover over the reception window. The clinic was locked down within two minutes, she said.
Smiley could hear sirens outside the building, so she knew police were on the scene. She checked The Columbian’s website from her office for additional updates. After about 30 to 45 minutes, police arrived at the clinic and escorted everyone out of the building.
“Our law enforcement teams did an incredible job,” Smiley said. “I was just so impressed.”
Melnick also praised the response of the Vancouver Police Department, Clark County Sheriff’s Office, Washington State Patrol and Veterans Affairs police. Staff within the building also responded bravely, he said.
Health department staff were sitting in the fourth-floor lobby when shots rang out. They ran downstairs and alerted everyone of the shooter, Melnick said.
“I think the staff did an incredible job responding to this,” he said. “But some are still shaken up about it.”
The county and Sea Mar made counselors available to their staff following the incident. While some employees are still working through the aftermath of the incident, most have resumed their regular work routine.
“This is something in your head that you remember for the rest of your life,” Melnick said.
“As bad as it was,” he said, “it could have been worse.”
