FRANKLIN TWP — As Bob Winters discussed preparation techniques for how to deal with active shooter situations, he told people at the Atrium he was not trying to make people paranoid or fearful.

“The reason we give this presentation is because people have concerns,” said Winters, protective security adviser for the Pittsburgh district for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

He spoke Friday at a seminar hosted by several regional tourism bureaus, including the Butler County Tourism and Convention Bureau.

He said the reason for his talk was to help business owners and others in preparation and plan for emergencies such as a shooter or attacker.

“There needs to be a lot of preparation,” Winters said.

He said “mental mapping” — where people have a general plan or can figure a plan out for when an emergency happens — is an important technique.

“I would say that everyone needs to have a mental map for when they hear gunfire coming,” Winters said.

Companies should have an emergency action plan for all types of emergency scenarios, including for active shooters. When making a plan, Winters said the planners should not do it alone.

“The best plans that are made are made collaboratively,” Winters said, saying plans should be coordinated with emergency agencies.

For instance, when a student staged a knife attack at Franklin Regional High School in 2014, Winters said the emergency response was good — within 20 minutes, everyone who was seriously injured was at a hospital.

“They had a plan,” Winters said.

He said once a plan is created, employees should be trained for implementing it.

In New Orleans, he said the city had a big emergency plan, but no training. So when Hurricane Katrina roared ashore in 2005, there was disaster and poor response, Winter said.

The emergency plan should include evacuation policy and procedure, and a designated evacuation location should be chosen.

He said human resources departments should do effective screenings and background checks on employees, create a system for reporting signs of potentially violent behavior and make counseling available to employees. Managers should institute access controls, such as locks and key cards, and create crisis kits that include items such as floor plans, flashlights, radios and emergency contact numbers.

If there is an active shooter in a facility, Winters said the first action to take is evacuate. If evacuation is not possible, the next best action is hide in a place the shooter is unlikely to discover.

People who have no other option, and whose life is in imminent danger, should take action against the shooter — a move Winters described as a “last resort.”

He said supervisors in companies should know the emergency plan because people in emergencies will be looking for a leader.

“If you are a supervisor or leader within the organization, people will turn to you,” Winters said.

Companies also need to prepare for actions that happen shortly after an incident, such as deciding who will act as a spokesman to the media, who will talk to family members and what steps should be taken to continue business operations.

Suspicious behavior tends to occur in attackers before incidents, though Winters said much of this suspicious behavior can be attributed to people who are casing for future robberies or other crimes.

When looking for suspicious behavior, people should be on the lookout for people taking photographs of non-photogenic things, taking notes, counting paces, asking odd questions and trespassing in employee-only areas, Winters said.

Reporting this behavior should be done by calling 911 or using a cell phone app called “See Something, Send Something,” Winters said.

He said businesses looking for preparedness information should visit www.dhs.gov/activeshooter and www.dhs.gov/private-sector-resources-catalog.