The shooters are in the building and the emergency call has been made.

For Harrisonburg Police, it was only a drill, but they're preparing for what could be a reality.

Harrisonburg Police Lt. Kurt Boshart says, "We have a lot of kids and a lot of teachers and a lot of faculty and staff that are in peril right now. So what they're trying to do. They're trying to locate, as quickly as they can, the bad guys."

School officials as well as firefighters and emergency communication officials prepared for the worst as well.

A command center was set up just down the street at the school's soccer fields.

The officers who participated in the drill are ones who have never done something like this before.

Boshart says, "They're stressed. The officers in training right now, even though it's training, we try to add as much stress as we can. For them time is moving fast. What seems like a lifetime to us, to them seems like a mere second."

He says incidents, such as James Madison University's Springfest and the Wachovia and SunTrust Bank emergencies, have helped police know their weaknesses and how units should respond when an actual situation is at hand.

While police hope a school shooting won't ever happen, they believe it's better to be prepared.

Boshart says, "We don't want to think about it, but it's better to be prepared and not to ever have to use that knowledge."

Following the drill, Gil Colman, a survivor of the Virginia Tech massacre addressed police and other people who volunteered to help with the drill.

He was shot in the head in a classroom in Norris Hall but was lucky enough to survive.

Colman says he wished he'd had some sort of training or skills to fall back on when the massacre was unfolding.

Of the people in his classroom, Colman was one of four people out of 14 who survived.

"Be prepared. It could happen anywhere," says Colman. "We don't want to happen anywhere. We don't want it to happen to us. I wasn't looking for it, and none of us were looking for anything like that. But, be prepared."

"Prior to Columbine, it was unheard of [for] a person to go into a school or a store with just the intention of killing people," says Harrisonburg Police Lt. Tom Hoover. "Columbine changed the thinking of law enforcement all across the country as far as law enforcement response about we need to get in there quick."

Police say they do plan on making such drills an annual event, because they learn so much after each incident.

The drill was over around 12 p.m. Friday.