BATH -- Thirty-two different agencies and dozens of volunteers spent Wednesday morning searching for a missing 12-year-old girl.
Luckily, it was all a practice drill, making sure Summit County's Child Abduction Response Team, known as CART, is ready to help at a moment's notice.
After months of planning, Bath Police activated a drill to test the team's plans and response in a search for a girl gone missing from Old Trail School.
"[We] set up a command post here and a staging area over at the Police Dept. We had officers out in the field conducting interviews, doing searches," said Inspector Bill Holland with the Summit County Sheriff.
Holland is also the commander of CART.
"It's an intense training. And it should be," said Debbie Reiss, director of the Summit County chapter of Guardians Advocating Child Safety and Protection.
There were several crime scenes and lots of yellow tape, and emotions ran high.
GASP Volunteers worked alongside law enforcement.
"It's scary," said Reiss. "Could this happen here? Yes and so it makes me feel better that I know that they're trained to do this in case my child or grandchild or somebody I know or don't know gets lost."
Officers say this training gives them an opportunity to correct mistakes and apply skills they need in tense situations, even mock interviews with Channel 3 News.
"Hopefully we'll never have something like Coble had last year with the mass shooting, but the same incident command principles, search and rescue, crime scene recovery, all those skill sets we would use again," said Bath Police Chief Mike McNeely, who organized the drill.
The CART team allows federal, state and local law enforcement to work together to help.
"There's a lot of jurisdictions out there that don't have the resources to handle a missing or abducted child," said Holland.
Holland said as police staff numbers shrink alongside smaller budgets, relying on regional partners becomes even more important.
"This way we have officers and fire personnel and rescue personnel that come from everywhere."
"I hope this never happens, we never need to use the team. I hope we just practice forever," said Holland. "But in case something does happen along these lines, we'll be ready."
GASP is always looking for volunteers to help its efforts. You can find more information by clicking here.
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