BY LAUREN BOND
Last year’s disastrous hurricane season produced numerous heart-tugging images and reports of pets that were abandoned, waiting for rescue, or worse. For years, the animal welfare community has been painfully aware that animals are impacted just as much as their human counterparts when disaster strikes. One of the important lessons from Katrina, Rita, and the other storms and natural disasters of 2005 is that first responders need to care about the animals in our districts as well as the people.
The fire service has a long history with animals. From the horse-drawn pumpers to the Dalmatians that remain our mascot, we always have had a special link to our four-legged friends. However, there has been a recent need for the first response community to pay closer attention to the animals in our first dues.
MORE THAN HALF THE DWELLINGS IN YOUR DISTRICT ARE HOME TO PETS AS WELL AS PEOPLE
Here is a statistic that may surprise you: If there are 10 of you in the station reading this article, the likelihood is that at least six of you are pet owners; at least three of you own more than one pet. That’s right: About 60 percent of Americans are pet owners, and many people own more than one.
To put it another way, if you serve a community of 100,000 people, you also serve a community that houses at least 60,000 animals (along with the veterinary clinics, animal shelters, and animal hospitals that go with them). In some areas of the United States, you can have more animals than humans in your first due.
It also is important to keep in mind that the animals in your first due may not be limited to house pets; they also can include creatures on whom the humans depend for their livelihood, like chickens, cattle, and horses. Did you know that the average milk cow is valued at $2,500 and beef cattle are sold for about $500 per head? Some race horses are insured for millions of dollars. In many communities, the most important revenue-generating businesses revolve around animals.
Anyone who has ever had to explain the death of a pet to a child understands how strong the bond can be between humans and their pets. People love their pets; they consider them family, and they want them rescued when disaster strikes. Countless owners who found their pets at our temporary rescue shelter during Hurricane Katrina told me they had lost everything they owned, but “now that the family is all back together and safe and sound, I don’t care about all that other stuff. Material goods can be replaced, but no one can replace my loved ones.”
I am not equating animal rescue with saving human lives, but it is part our our jobs and something we cannot ignore. If you don’t have the same feeling for pets that most pet owners do, then consider this: By law, pets and livestock are considered property, and our jobs are to protect lives and property. One of my favorite quotes from a National Disaster Animal Response Team leader is: “I have yet to get a call for service from any animals asking us to come save them; it always seems to be the owners that pick up the phone.”
I also want to make it clear that although I am advocating increased awareness and planning regarding animal rescue by first responders, I am not suggesting that animal rescue is more important than life safety. If an animal has to perish for everyone to go home at the end of the shift, so be it. But let’s be realistic: A good portion of our calls will require that we be aware of the presence and needs of the animals around us.
ANIMAL RESCUE FROM A SAFETY PERSPECTIVE
So how does this human-animal bond affect our jobs? Permit me to suggest some aspects of animal rescue to consider from a safety perspective.
We are not trained in animal control, nor am I advocating that be the case, but how many of you know the names of your local animal control officers? How many of you even know if you have a local animal control officer?
Here are some practical scenarios to consider and the types of questions you will need to think about in advance, before you encounter (as you undoubtedly will) a situation involving animal rescue:
- A stock trailer overturns on the highway. The driver is uninjured but says that animals in the back of the trailer are worth millions of dollars and demands that you try to save them. Are you trained to extricate those animals? Do you know how to hold a horse or cow down so it can’t hurt you or anyone else, and did you know that it usually takes only one person to do that? Do you realize that cattle and horses are trucked around this country on our local highways and interstates every day?
- A tractor-trailer hauling chickens is involved in an accident on the highway; hundreds of birds are released in the crash. Do you know what risks are involved in gathering them up? Do you even know how? Where would you put 400 birds in the middle of downtown Chicago?
- An elderly patient who lives alone falls in her kitchen and breaks a hip. She has three dogs loose in the house. She advises dispatch when she calls that the back door is open and that the dogs are friendly. How do you safely make entry into the house? What do you do with the dogs when you transport her? Whom do you notify if they are aggressive toward you? What can you do to avoid being injured if they attack you? If they are big dogs instead of small ones, can you assume that the smaller ones will be friendlier?
- A dam breaks down on the outskirts of town, flooding everything with up to three feet of water. You are sent to the local animal-control shelter for a water-flow alarm. What can do to save those animals? What if they are aggressive? What if they are locked in their cages? What if they are in danger of drowning? Who is responsible for making these decisions?
- An evacuation is issued for your area, and you are sent to evacuate a subdivision. Many of the residents are willing to evacuate but only if they can take their pets with them. If you won’t let them take their animals with them, they tell you that they will stay behind. What are you going to do? Where can you tell them to go? Will you go back after the disaster to rescue them at that time?
These are real scenarios, actual anecdotes that I have heard over the years. My personal favorite is the afternoon in August when the Baltimore County Police Department spent almost five hours chasing a herd of escaped buffalo through the highly populated town of Pikesville, ending up with a very dangerous stand-off on a tennis court. The officers tried to move the buffalo using sirens, lights, and chaise lounges. One well-placed kick or charge, and we would have been having a line-of-duty parade.
With a bit of advanced planning, our colleagues in Baltimore may have recognized that a skittish herd of buffalo will settle right down if moved into an area to graze. Minus the lights and sirens, it would have taken only three people to move the whole herd onto a stock trailer to move them back to their farm, three miles away. Instead, many officers risked their lives to unsuccessfully wrangle some buffalo. Ultimately, animal control was brought in, and the livestock owner came to move them back to the farm.
GET TO KNOW YOUR LOCAL ANIMAL CONTROL RESOURCES
To properly prepare for animal rescue, first responders must know whether there is a local animal control agency or a humane society or SPCA with law-enforcement responsibility. If there is not a locally sanctioned animal-rescue group, find out if there is anyone in your dispatcher’s card file or in your response area who knows more about animals than you. That person may well save your life.
Here are some questions you can ask your local animal control officer (ACO):
- Can our first responders cross-train with the ACO and his fellow officers (learning, for example, how to use an animal control pole)?
- Is the ACO part of the police department and therefore empowered to make arrests?
- Can the ACO make entry into a house when there is suspected abuse or neglect of animals?
- Is the ACO available to assist you when you think you need it? Can you keep those lines of communication open?
As you get to know your local ACO, you may be surprised to learn that many of the tools that animal control experts deploy may have dual uses in fire rescue. In a water rescue, an animal-control pole with a loop on the end may come in handy to help pull a person up to solid ground. An Anderson sling (used to lift livestock) can also move heavy people. Did you know you can use an air compressor to free a stuck horse, cow, or human from deep mud or sand?
Conversely, the ACO may be pleasantly surprised to discover that the local fire service has some tools that are of use in animal-control operations: a winch that can pull a horse up a hill; a thermal imaging camera that can find a dangerous dog before it finds a person (with its teeth!); the ability to breach a fence, wall, or trailer in a matter of minutes.
Here in Maryland, we not only have wonderfully trained animal control officers who are dispatched from the same system as our police and fire resources, but we also have a veterinarian on call to come to the scene and perform emergency medicine should we need him (including sedation and, when necessary, euthanasia). That doctor has been an invaluable resource on more than one occasion in my time with the department.
ANIMAL RESCUE SOON MAY BE A LEGAL REQUIREMENT
At the recent National Conference on Animals in Disaster, Undersecretary of Preparedness for the Department of Homeland Security George Foresman said he is striving for a different culture of preparedness, because if we aren’t advocating and taking care of the needs of the people we serve, then we have failed in a good portion of our mission. All the speakers at the conference spoke about the need for individual education and preparedness and for community, jurisdictional, and state-level training and education as they pertain to people and their pets in disasters.
The Emergency Support Functions and the Target Capabilities List are now being written to include the needs of people and their animals. As you read this, legislation is being written and passed that includes pets in the evacuation and rescue considerations of state- and federal-level resources. We know that we will be on the front line of those evacuations, and we will be going back in to do the rescues. So why not be educated and ahead of the game?
LAUREN BOND has been a member of the Baltimore County Volunteer Fireman’s Association since 1998 and is a member of Hereford Volunteer Fire Company. She was a FEMA USAR K9 handler and a K9 Search and Rescue Tech for local and state groups. Most recently, she served as the Disaster Response Program Coordinator for the Humane Society of the United States, with an extended deployment for Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Her 88 days of deployment in the Gulf Coast were spent primarily in Mississippi and Louisiana. She was the liaison to the Mississippi Board of Animal Health and the Field Operations Section Chief in Louisiana alongside the Louisiana SPCA in New Orleans. She is working as a consultant in the field of animals disaster planning and response for government agencies.
