PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WMBB) – A number of schools across the Panhandle received quite a scare Wednesday. 

High schools in Bay, Jackson, and Escambia Counties went into lockdown after a 911 caller reported a school shooting. 

After further investigation, officials deemed all calls to be part of what officials call a “swatting” incident, where someone calls in a false report of a deadly event, just to get a large police response.

Multiple Bay High students say this response led to chaos and fear across campus. 

“They just got scared and everyone started running to the STEM building because everyone was saying go to the building,” Bay High School student Vanessa Lopez Garcia said. ”Go to the STEM building. But then some people couldn’t go into the STEM building because some teachers were pushing them away. I don’t know why. But, like, what’s it going on? So other people ran out of the school. They got out of the school and jumped over the fence. They started running because they were really scared.”

In the wake of Wednesday’s, incident Bay District Schools Director of Communications Sharon Michalik told News 13 that school counselors would be available for students who were traumatized by the incident.

Students, however, are saying they were never made aware of this. And instead, students said the faculty has not addressed the incident and is scolding students who do talk about it.

“Some teachers were like, ‘oh, you can’t talk about that in school’ or ‘like, we’re not talking about that no more here.’ Like, I think they’re, avoiding that it happened. Like, forget it. Like, nothing happened,” Lopez said.

Students who grew up in the Bay District Schools system said they have never practiced a ‘hard lockdown’, and Wednesday’s events left them feeling unsafe at school.

Bay District officials issued a statement about the situation.

“We are incredibly grateful for the swift and comprehensive response from law enforcement to the situation yesterday. We also commend all of the students and staff for doing the very best they could in a confusing and difficult situation. While we train for hard lockdowns on a regular basis, implementing one during lunch time is very challenging but students and staff acted quickly to put the plans into action. We completely understand that many students were traumatized by yesterday’s swatting call and we sent extra counselors to the school today to help those students process their feelings.”