Montville High School Goes into Lockdown [with VIDEO]

At 9 a.m. on Thursday, Montville High School went into lockdown.

Teachers and administrators locked the doors of their classrooms and offices, marked the rooms with colored cards, turned off the lights and gathered away from the windows.

They stopped talking, and they waited.

Waited in the dark. Waited to hear the all-clear. Waited, in an atmosphere that stirred the imagination to dark possibilities.

Then the all-clear sounded, the lights were turned on, the doors unlocked, and life at Montville High School resumed without a hitch.

Montville Police Officer Robert Bedard, School Resource Officer Karen Moorehead and Resident State Trooper Troy Gelinas said the drill went very well. No glitches. No problems.

Perfect?

"'Perfect' means no room for improvement," Gelinas said.

The state requires schools to perform these lockdown drills, Superintendent Pam Aubin explained. The schools can do these drills in lieu of some fire drills, but must do two lockdown drills annually.

The lockdown procedure is to protect students and staff if there were an intruder, an armed student or a hostage situation, according to the Montville Public Schools School Safety Manual.

When the classroom doors and windows are locked, and the lights turned off, the teacher or adminstrator slides a color card under the door, and posts the same color card on the classroom's exterior window.

A red card - or no card - indicates a serious situation demanding immediate attention. The green card indicates that the room is safe and secure, and that no serious situation exists.