About 600 employees are expected to return to work at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino on Monday where just over a month ago a mass shooting left 14 people dead.
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The center has been closed since December 2 when killers Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik started their shooting rampage.
Monday morning, the office was surrounded by fencing, and security guards checked employees for identification at each entrance.
Executive Director Lavinia Johnson says workers tell her they want to return. Counselors are available, and no visitors are planned this week. They miss the center’s community and stability it provides.
The conference building is the only part of the campus that will not reopen Monday.
Behind a chain-link fence and under heavy security, workers on Monday returned to their offices at the San Bernardino campus where 14 people died last month in a massacre.
It seals the conference center that San Bernardino County’s health department was renting for the holiday luncheon when the two shooters began their assault. Few of them have gone to the office since the killings, other than a brief visit to gather personal belongings.
But Hoyt said being back together under the same roof will help employees do their work more effectively. But they hadn’t been together in the place where everything froze since law enforcement officers whisked them away after the gunfire. Afterwards, the social workers and psychiatric counselors will separate into smaller groups and talk about their feelings.
“I don’t think we’re ever going to just, you know”, he said, with his voice trailing off. “No, it’s too big”.
Sitting for an interview last week in a tidy courtyard shaded by two of the center’s large, red stone buildings, Johnson and associate executive director Kevin Urtz reflected on the reopening.
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FILE – Pictures of victims of the Dec. 2, 2015, terror attack are displayed at a makeshift memorial in San Bernardino, California, Dec. 7, 2015.
