Photo courtesy Peace River Public School and Holy Family Catholic Regional School districts

By Jeff Henson

Mile Zero Multiplex stakeholders meet to learn from October 28th hold and secure at the facility

Nov 3, 2022 | 3:20 PM

An outside threat called in last Friday to one of the schools in Grimshaw led to a hold and secure being put into place at the Mile Zero Multiplex, which houses both a Peace River Public and Holy Family Catholic school, as well as recreational and library facilities for the community.

Stakeholders from all of those parties sat down with RCMP and town officials earlier this week in what was called an After Action meeting, which looked at what was learned from the incident.

Holy Family Catholic Regional Division Superintendent Betty Turpin says because there are a number of different stakeholders involved in that facility, it is important to have a meeting like this.

“The impact of taking such a large facility and putting it on a hold and secure, it did not take long in a small community for that to get out, and coming to the realization that we need to learn from how the event unfolded, and not that mistakes were made, it was just how do we better communicate, who are the partners that we need to communicate with, and how do we communicate.”

Turpin adds a lot of things were done right in the handling of the threat.

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“Our administrators, who were on the site (at both schools) at the time, they reacted very appropriately. All the students were maintained and kept safe. Mostly what we learned that we can do a little better is having a communications protocol, where we are prepared for statements that need to be released. We’re prepared for who needs to be contacted because it impacted so many other things.”

Turpin says the communication protocol also needs to include contacting parents from both schools in a timely fashion and making sure all stakeholders know the differences between lockdowns, hold and secure, and shelter-in-place events.

“What is a lockdown, and what is required? What is a hold and secure, and what takes place? And what is a shelter in place? All of these terminologies have evolved over the course of the last few years, given our situations. And we need to educate our staff, our parents, our guardians, our community members as to what those things mean in any of our buildings.”

Through their investigation of the matter, Peace Regional RCMP determined there was no actual threat to the schools or the facility.