Soft Lockdown

I didn't even know there was such a thing, until Thursday. My school is about 20 minutes away from Ft. Hood. So on Thursday, around 2:00, this is what I heard:

"Teachers...I need you to listen to me very carefully...and...students I need for you to listen to me as well. At this time we are going to be under a soft lockdown. This means we have locked all the exterior doors, and we will be limiting access into the building. If you have a class in the portables, you will need to come to the cafeteria and be escorted to your class by one of us.."

I knew, or at least I was fairly sure, that this wasn't a drill. Mainly because usually when we have a drill for a lockdown, they come on the speaker about 2 minutes beforehand and go "We are going to have a lockdown drill in 2 minutes". So, I had no idea what was going on. I thought maybe we had recieved a bomb threat or something. Of course right after that announcement, this is what I heard:

"Is this a drill???"
"What's happening??"
"IF you find out what is happening, will you tell us?"
"Even if you aren't supposed to tell us, will you still tell us?"

Etc.

By the end of that period, one of the other teachers had figured out what was going on at Ft. Hood. At that time, we thought one of the shooters was still on the loose, and that was why we were on lockdown. When my principal came around he told us to tell the students that something had happened in Killeen, and that we were just locked down as a precaution. Well I had a student in my class at that time whose father is a soldier at Ft. Hood, and whose mother teaches in Killeen. Luckily, the teacher next to me had just gotten an email from his father, and his mom doesn't teach on base, so I was able to tell him his parents were ok.

It was a pretty interesting end to a school day, with not a lot getting accomplished education-wise. When I left school, I spoke with Casey, who was in Temple at the time. He said there were helicopters everywhere. We figured out later, it was probably because a lot of the soldiers were brought to our hospital, Scott & White, and also there were news helicopters circling. In fact, when we were watching Fox News, they were circling that hospital, which was pretty surreal. That was where Kailey was born!

It is so hard for me to wrap my mind around why somebody would do something like this. It just doesn't make any sense. "I don't want to go to Iraq, and I don't want you to either, so I'm just going to kill you." Hmmm. It was a very sad day on Thursday, and obviously it is still a very sad situation. It has been pretty crazy to be right in the middle of it!