First Responders Train For Unthinkable On South Beach

MIAMI BEACH, FL — Traffic was shut down along Washington Avenue for a time on Wednesday morning as dozens of first responders, actors and volunteers practiced for the unthinkable — a terrorist attack along one of the busiest stretches of South Beach. Twist nightclub opened its doors to allow officers to practice a mock active-shooter scenario while first responders outside the club responded to a mock pedestrian attack involving a motor vehicle. The training was eerily reminiscent of the Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando and recent terror attacks in Europe.

"It's the most realistic type of exercise that we do where we're moving personnel and we have injured victims," acknowledged Captain Daniel Morgalo of the Miami Beach Police Department as first responders wrapped up the tw0-hour exercise around 10:30 a.m. Traffic was closed between 10 to 12 Streets. "The goal is to make it as realistic as possible so that the first responders are dealing with the closest thing to the real thing." (Sign up for our free Daily Newsletters and Breaking News Alerts for the Miami Beach Patch.)

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Morgalo said that between 100 to 125 people participated in the training, including a number of employees from Twist, which is among the most popular nightclubs on South Beach. There was simulated gunfire and volunteers even applied fake blood for added realism. In some cases, mannequins were used in place of real people.

"It had a little bit of a component where a vehicle was used initially to try and run down some pedestrians so there was a little bit of that, and then it became an active shooter inside club Twist," he told Patch. "It's more than just the shooter. It's the vehicle and everything that came before it."

In addition to the Miami Beach Police and Fire Departments, the drill included the city's Department of Emergency Management and Planning Department.

"It's just tremendous training for our SWAT team and our officers because we don't normally go inside nightclubs," Morgalo explained. "The only time we would be inside a nightclub is either as a civilian, or in the event of an extreme emergency like this, where we would need to save people's lives. So, it's huge for us to get the opportunity to go inside the nightclub, deal with the confusion of the music, the darkness and the lighting and everything that's going on in there — not knowing the way out. So, this is about as tricky and as realistic as we can get with a training exercise."

He said that all of the participants were given a basic safety briefing before the drill and officials will spend weeks analyzing what went right and where additional work is needed.

"We're going to create a tabletop version of [the exercise] where we're going to deal with the investigative aspects of it and everything that follows up the initial active-shooter response dealing with mass casualties, mass loss of life, the terrorism investigation, the death investigations, all the logistics that come with that and that's done in a discussion format."

Neris Franco worked up an appetite passing out water to the participants and made a quick stop to grab a sandwich from a local eatery.

"All I really need to do was keep people hydrated," she said of her earlier participation as she pulled her car in front of a restaurant. "Hopefully, they won't give me a ticket."

Members of the Miami Beach SWAT team respond to an active-shooter drill at Twist nightclub. Photo courtesy of Miami Beach Police Department