Hell Drill

Hell Drill, an event organized by a local fire chief in Greenport, NY, was a simulated mass casualty shooting at a Long Island high school intended to train first responders about the agonizing choices they would face during a real shooting spree. This exercise took place less than two weeks after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas that killed 19 students and two teachers.

During this event, 62 simulated victims, made up with realistic theatrical makeup injuries, and roughly 240 first responders, participated in a massive exercise for departments to prepare for a catastrophic event. For the drill, a young man was assumed to have opened fire on a large group of high school students cheering from the bleachers during a football game and creating fires as diversions.

This simulation relied on high school students, many of whom are members of the junior volunteer fire and ambulance departments, and who pretended to scream in pain as they were assigned triage tags; each tag color indicating the seriousness of their injuries. The scenario included a car set on fire in the parking lot and fire engines from several Long Island departments. A helicopter was also deployed to pick up those designated to be in the most unstable conditions, adding to the chaos.

I would be the only photographer on the scene. In preparation, I spoke with all departments to create a precise schedule that would have me running from fire to EMT and finally to police training sessions. The day concluded with over 80 members of local police working on drills within the school hallways and classrooms in pursuit of the simulated “shooter” and possible ways for the teams to confront him.

Lindsay Morris

Lindsay Morris is a photographer best known for documenting events in her personal life with an emphasis on community engagement. Morris received her BFA from the University of Michigan School of Art and discovered her fascination with photography during a year-long Rotary Exchange program in South Africa. She continued her photographic studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with Barbara Crane; the School for International Training, Kenya; and in Ann Arbor, MI with Joanne Leonard.

Morris is a TED Speaker whose talk from TEDWomen 2023 was published in March, 2024. She is an Artist in Residence at The Watermill Center, Watermill, NY (2024) and a recipient of the NYFA JGS Photography Fellowship (2023). Morris’s work has been widely published in The New York Times Magazine, TIME, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, Scientific American, GEO, Marie Claire, and Elle.

Her works are held in private and public collections including the Parrish Art Museum, Watermill, NY; and the Newport Art Museum, Newport, RI. Exhibitions include Paris Photo PX3 Award (2023); Leiber Collection, NY; ICP Concerned, NY; The Newport Art Museum, RI; Parrish Art Museum, NY; Hamburg Triennial, Germany; Fotofest, Houston; and Photoville Brooklyn, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include the Guild Hall Art Museum, East Hampton, NY; Arts Center at Duck Creek, East Hampton, NY; and Clamp Art, NY.

She is a producer of the 2016 BBC documentary, “My Transgender Summer Camp” and the upcoming documentary, “Mom, I Have Something to Tell You” (2024). She published her monograph, You Are You, documenting a summer camp for gender-expansive children in 2015 with Kehrer Verlag.