ODESSA, Texas — It's not an incident anyone wants to experience, but an active shooter or mass shooting situation can happen anywhere at any time.
"The shooting in the Uvalde school was close to my heart, I have family in the Uvalde area," said Mikala Reznik an attendee of an active shooter training in Odessa Tuesday. "Just being close to home, I said it's time for us to be more informed, more involved, and that's what made this happen."
This is why West Texans gathered for a civilian response to active shooter class.
"Basically what you have is an active shooter represents X, police response is Y," said Danny Brookshire with ECHPD. "What we try to do is train people on how to react when the shooting starts and when law enforcement actually arrives."
In the class, they went over very important things to keep in mind if you are ever in an active shooter event.
"I hope that people will be able to come into a building, assess every building or room they ever enter into and be able to come up with a plan just in case the inevitable happens, because nobody is exempt from being involved in a disaster," said Brookshire.
Always make sure you know where the exits are in any building you're in.
"This really elevated my awareness and so now I have more that I need to be prepared for, and that makes me feel less victimized and more as an advocate for helping not only myself, my family, but others if needed," said Reznik.
After the class there was also a stop the bleed course, which taught those in attendance how to use a tourniquet and gauze to stop bleeding.
"If an incident was to occur, then it's usually your bystanders, it's our community, those are the people that are going to the scene first, you know before the police, before the EMS," said Sirena Watts with MCH. "And so that's why I really want to reach out to the communities is because they're going to be the ones on the scene first. So if I can teach them how to stop the life-threatening bleeding, if I can teach them to stop it, then you could potentially save a life."