Code black.

A code no hospital personnel ever wants to hear while working at Blue Mountain Health System.On Monday morning, the code was called just after 8 a.m. as an "active shooter" walked into the lobby of the health system's Gnaden Huetten campus in Lehighton and started shooting. It was part of a simulation drill to help better prepare the staff in the event a mass shooting, much like the one in an Orlando, Florida nightclub on June 12, were to happen in Carbon County.Joe Guardiani, director of Fund Development and Government Relations and the health system's Emergency Response Team coordinator, said the shooter came through the lobby, "shot" two people and made his way down the hallway and back to the pharmacy area.Staff members working on the ground floor of the campus practiced their evacuation routes and could be seen standing away from the hospital, doing head counts and making sure everyone was safe.Supervisors also discussed what hurdles the employees faced, such as exits that were locked and areas that didn't have speakers to hear announcements.Inside, the "gunman," now barricaded inside the pharmacy area, negotiated with Lehighton police and additional gunfire occurred, claiming three additional "victims" before he was taken into custody."Our goal (for the drill) was to evaluate our staff's abilities to put those procedures in place (if) God forbid, a horrific thing like this would happen," Guardiani said.The all clear at the Lehighton campus was given just after 9 a.m.Guardiani said that the staff at Blue Mountain Health System has been training in the 'Run, Hide, Fight' plan strategies for an armed assailant and the drill provided a firsthand experience to practice the procedures in place."Violence in health care settings is on the rise," a news release from the health system said. "The BMHS HERT team, whose responsibility it is to prepare staff for all types of emergency situations, will move beyond the typical active shooter table top exercise to offer the staff an opportunity to actively participate in an active shooter scenario involving various outpatient departments of the hospital."The drill was coordinated with the help of Carbon County Emergency Management Agency and Communication Center officials, as well as Lehighton police.Doreen Larizzio, supervisor for Gnaden Huetten's housekeeping department, who oversees a staff of 27, said that the drill was a good exercise to help prepare for emergencies like shootings, which are becoming more common around the country."I think it is very important that we have these drills with the way the world is today," she said. "I have drilled with my staff for many, many months prior to make sure we are secure and safe."Larizzio said some of her staff were visibly upset over the drill just because of the magnitude of the emergency and the recent events in Orlando, but she said that everyone worked together well and made sure they were practicing the procedures in place."When you have a real active shooter, how do you know what the right thing is, you don't," she said. "You just react. I tried to keep them calm and confident to make sure they get through what they need to get through but it's something we have to deal with every day."When I first started here, there was nothing like this," Larizzio said, adding that she has worked at the hospital for 27 years. "When I first started this was a friendly hospital where you came to work, had fire drills, had power outages for drills. Our biggest disaster was a snowstorm. Now that snowstorm has gone from snow to shootings. It causes a lot of anxiety for people."What I hope everyone got out of this was that they feel secure. This is our daily life. You go to the movies, go to shopping malls, you go to store just for milk and bread and you just don't know what will happen. I want them to be prepared and feel safe and secure."Guardiani echoed Larizzio's thoughts."Everyone did excellent," he said. "Everyone took this very seriously. (After the announcement) we got patients, visitors and staff out of the hallways; everywhere that could be locked down was and a mass notification was sent out to our outpatient offices so they didn't send staff back into the building."Palmerton Hospital became the patient surge unit because in the event of a real mass casualty, the emergency department would be shut down and ambulances diverted to the nearest hospital.This gave Palmerton staff the chance to practice and prepare for an influx of patients coming in to the facility.