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DHS-funded video advises how to survive shooting attack

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Following the Aurora, Colo., movie theater massacre that left the nation in horror, the city of Houston has released a Department of Homeland Security-funded video showing what to do in the event of a shooting.

“We hope our residents are never confronted with such an event, but we want to prepare them with some important information if they ever find themselves in this situation,” said Dennis J. Storemski, director of the Mayor’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security.

The video, “Run.Hide.Fight. Surviving an Active Shooter Event,” produced by the City of Houston Mayor’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security, advises those in the midst of a shooting attack to run, hide and fight.

Watch video:

Additional tips from the video, the city highlights, include:

  • Run if a safe path is available. Always try and escape or evacuate even if others insist on staying.
  • Encourage others to leave with you but don’t let the indecision of others slow down your own effort to escape.
  • Once you are out of the line of fire, try to prevent others from walking into the danger zone and call 9-1-1.
  • If you can’t get out safely, find a place to hide.
  • When hiding, turn out lights, remember to lock doors and silence your ringer and vibration mode on your cell phone
  • As a last resort, working together or alone, act with aggression, use improvised weapons and fight.

Dennis Storemski, director of the Mayor’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security, told Houston’s KTRK that the video had been in the works prior to the Aurora shooting.

“It just so happened that the timing of us finishing the DVD coincided with this event,” he told the ABC affiliate.

The shooting last Friday in Aurora during a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” claimed that lives of 12 and injured dozens more.

Alleged shooter James Holmes made his first appearance in court on Monday.

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