A full-scale active shooter exercise came to an end Friday afternoon inside the Soo Locks Canal Park.
The two-day 'Northern Great Lakes Area Maritime Security Training and Exercise Program' and 'Shield St. Mary's Full-Scale Exercise' started Thursday morning with a combination of sixteen local, county, state, tribal, federal and Canadian law enforcement agencies and organizations participating.
The plan for this drill started in 2018 but the COVID-19 pandemic put it on hold until this week
The popular Canal Park and Visitors Center was closed during the exercise and is now open again to the public.
The scenario involved an active shooter on a Famous Soo Locks Boat Tour boat filled with tourists and located in the smaller MacArthur Lock.
The United States Coast Guard Sector Northern Great Lakes was one of the agencies involved.
"We unfortunately know these types of tragic scenarios are all-too-common and so it serves as a focusing element that everybody involved when going through these exercises and keeping in the back of your head that it's not completely far-fetched in some capacity." Lt. Joseph Snyder from USCG Sector Northern Great Lakes said.
At Lake Superior State University's Cisler Center, several rooms were used as a communication hub to monitor the situation and record data.
The data will be collected and shared with the organizations that were involved.
"We will immediately be rolling into what we call a 'hot wash' where we get everybody together to fill out evaluation and feedback forms. Everything will be recorded and shared with everyone to build on the next drill which will be in about four years. I think that is the type of value in these kinds of training exercises. You get to really validate the plans that we have in place and actually be sitting next to the people that you would be involved with and say, okay, does this make sense?" Lt. Snyder said.
The larger Poe Lock remained open to all vessel traffic throughout the drill.
