About 20 people covered in blood, torn clothes and gaping wounds gathered around Kathy Dollarhide, a trauma nurse at St. Mary’s Medical Center, as she put the final touches on her group of victims Saturday night.

“Here, let me squirt a little bit more blood on you,” she said, going around the group freshening their “wounds” made up of moulage makeup with a bottle of shiny, deep red fake blood.

She reminded her group of the three main rules: don’t touch the first responders, don’t post photos on social media and stay in character.

It’s been about two years since the Long Beach Police Department last conducted a department-wide active shooter drill at Long Beach City College. This drill included a simulation with gallons of fake blood and volunteer actors yelling out pleas for help—”My friend’s been shot!”— to first responders covered in body armor and holding orange-tipped guns.

This time, the Long Beach Fire Department joined them to practice newer techniques involving a joint command center and a rescue task force made up of four paramedics to treat victims and four police officers to protect the paramedics.

Instead of waiting for police to tell firefighters it’s all clear to treat victims who have been shot, they can go in and start treating patients right away, according to Jeff Liberman, commander of LBPD’s Security Services Division.

“We want to get people to trauma intervention as soon as possible,” Liberman said.

The shooter may not be neutralized yet, but paramedics will still go in with protective gear and officers to protect them, according to Jim Rexwinkel, Deputy Chief of Operations.

A recent example of this was about a year ago—June 25, 2018—when an elderly man set fire to his retirement home unit and shot responding firefighters, killing Capt. David Rosa and wounding another firefighter. After the initial shooting, officers went in with responding paramedics to get to Rosa.

“That incident, I think showcased how prepared we actually were,” Rexwinkel said as his eyes misted. “… The police went in immediately and put themselves in between the shooter and where they knew we were working on Captain Rosa.”

Saturday’s training was also the first one they’ve conducted at night: the simulated gunfire lasted until about 3 a.m. The mass shooting incidents in Thousand Oaks and Paris were at night, so it’s important that officers get training with that element.

“It adds a different layer of complexity to our training exercise: under the cover of darkness,” said Alex Avila, deputy chief of the LBPD Support Bureau. “It makes it harder to locate victims, but that’s a reality: at night you may not be able to see someone readily, so we want to make sure our searches are methodical but quick.”

Everyone in both the police and fire departments, plus several outside police departments, were able to train throughout the night. The simulation was run over and over again as new first responders cycled in to practice the techniques.

Personnel who were training were cycled through with personnel working overtime, with the cost covered by grants. Dollarhide coordinated about 100 total volunteer victims from nursing students, police explorers, EMT students and Long Beach Search and Rescue volunteers.

“This is a community effort,” Liberman said.