PARIS – The Oxford County Animal Response Team is bracing for disaster.
The organization will take part in a full-scale exercise May 19 at Molly Ockett Middle School in Fryeburg. The event, hosted by the Oxford County Emergency Management Agency, will test first-responder abilities for mass casualty and hazardous materials disasters at an event such as the Fryeburg Fair. The Community Emergency Response Team will open the school as a shelter to admit “victims,” while animal team will use the school’s bus garage to house displaced pets.
Molly Ockett Middle School is one of six locations in the county that can operate as an American Red Cross shelter. It is the only one that has an agreement with animal response team, though the organization is trying to get the other locations to admit pets as well.
Under the Pet Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act, a federal measure signed into law in October, state and local emergency management agencies must have plans for the accommodation of pets. The inspiration for the PETS Act came from events during and after Hurricane Katrina, where inadequate emergency plans often forced people to abandon their pets or stay with them in a dangerous situation.
The Oxford County Animal Response Team has been up and running since August. Most of its members have been through emergency response team raining, and many have taken other specialty courses, such as a sheltering program offered by the Humane Society. Ken Ward, one of the group’s members, helped shelter large animals during the 1998 ice storm.
On Monday, the group met to discuss their upcoming events.
On April 9, four members will go to a animal response team conference in Rensselaer, N.Y. The conference will hold five workshops, and the group plans to split up so they can attend as many as possible.
“It’s very heartening,” said Allyson Chase, administrative assistant for the Oxford County Emergency Management Agency and Oxford County Animal Response Team member. She praised the sacrifice the members would be making in taking a day off from work to make the long trip.
The shelter being set up at the school’s heated bus garage will hold a maximum of 50 dogs and 60 cats in crates. Wild, endangered, or illegal animals are not allowed, and some animals cannot be accommodated.
“We’re not equipped to take fish,” Chase said.
The group prepared a list of supplies and materials needed for the exercise. Many offered to bring their own animals to the shelter.
“I think we’re going to have around 15 animals there, a mix of cats and dogs,” Chase said. Their presence, she said, offers a more realistic scenario in which the animals must be housed together, attended to and reunited with their owners.
Chase’s 9-year-old mutt Emmet has been at her office for as long as she has.
Chase said people can volunteer to help the animal team in many ways, including joining the group and making donations.
She believes the presence of animal shelters, alongside the Red Cross shelters, will help the other disaster victims as well.
“It would also be better for the people,” she said. “I wouldn’t go to a shelter without my dog.”
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