When emergencies happen, it's important for first responders to be prepared. On Friday, several public safety agencies and the Harrisonburg school system used an active-shooter scenario training exercise at Thomas Harrison Middle School to sharpen their skills.

"We take the chaos and we at least try to organize it. Every situation is somewhat chaotic and rightfully so. You have some situations that some people may have never encountered before," says Harrisonburg Police Lt. Kurt Boshart.

The training exercise is based on a scenario where an officer responds to a routine call of a suspicious vehicle circling the school. During this drill, the officer is shot.

About four minutes later, more officers arrive to find the doors have been bolted closed. They call for back up, and once back-up arrives, they face off with a shooter, find more victims, and deal with explosions.

Boshart says there is an important reason this scenario is different than last year's.

"We can't dictate what's going to happen, and each time something has happened throughout the nation, it's different. So each time we do a training, it's not going to be the same thing," says Boshart.

This is the first time Harrisonburg Schools Superintendent Don Ford has seen the training exercise. He says he was impressed with the work of the first responders and he says the location of the training will be of use if there is an emergency problem like this in the future.

"Should there every arise an incident that requires that kind of response, then their familiarity with the buildings is going to enable them to do a better job," says Ford.

Each department will now take a look at what did or didn't work in the exercises to evaluate their response plans in the event of an actual emergency.