By Bradford L. Miner
Telegram & Gazette
BRIMFIELD, Mass. — Few forces of nature can alter a landscape as dramatically as a tornado, and while people come to grips with a life turned upside down, their pets do not.
As first responders along the 39-mile path of the June 1 tornado addressed human needs, a cadre of local and state officials and scores of volunteers from private, nonprofit organizations provided the same service for injured and displaced animals: dogs and cats, horses and livestock, and in one instance a small rabbit.
Brian O’Connor, rescue services manager for the Animal Rescue League of Boston, described the day-after scene here as “extremely intense” as volunteers crawled over and through downed trees and damaged or destroyed buildings looking for pets that had become separated from their owners during the storm.
Mr. O’Connor said ARL got a call the morning after the tornado from Lorraine O’Connor, state veterinarian, asking for a team to meet with Bonnie Smith, large animal vet in Brimfield.
“We were asked to check on the large animal population, given the number of horse farms and agriculture in the region. And we did provide a trailer to bring one horse to Tufts to have the piece of wood removed from its leg,” he recounted.
“At another home, where no one could get in to check on the animals, we found three horses in the barn, seven cats in house, all in good shape. We had to navigate our way up a driveway which we couldn’t see because of all the debris.”
The team provided fresh water and food, cleaned the stalls, and made certain the cats had food and water as well.
Mr. O’Connor said much of the time, the team did wellness checks to make certain pet owners had what they needed to care for their animals, along with numbers to call if they needed help.
“We found everyone very appreciative of our efforts. For the most part, the horse community is pretty self-sufficient, close-knit, and they were already reaching out to others, offering food, water, transport or shelter as needed,” he said.
Pets still lost
With a tornado, Mr. O’Connor said, the path is distinct and the landscape can go from unscathed to utter destruction in a matter of a few feet or yards.
“If it’s surreal for disaster volunteers, one can only imagine the impact a storm like this has on pets. They may have become frightened during the storm, escaped through broken windows and doors, emerging to sights and smells that are completely foreign to what they know. It’s not like they can understand why their world has changed so dramatically,” he said.
Mr. O’Connor, a member of the board of directors of the state of Massachusetts Animal Response Team, said while it was an ARL team June 2 under the authority of the Department of Agricultural Resources, SMART was in Monson the day after the tornado and established a shelter for displaced pets.
“That’s been particularly helpful for pet owners who need a safe and secure place during the day for their pets while they go about the business of putting their lives back together. They pick them up at the end of the day, and it seems to have worked out fairly well,” Mr. O’Connor said.
He said some pet owners have yet to recover their animals lost during the storm, and humane traps have been set with the hope that pets and owners eventually will be reunited.
JoAnn Griffin, president of the Central Massachusetts Disaster Animal Response Team, said one apparent lesson from this disaster is that temporary shelters for pets need to be established in proximity to human shelters as part of any disaster preparedness plan.
Mrs. Griffin said CMDART, a private, nonprofit disaster response organization, worked with SMART and had 25 volunteers on standby. It partnered with SMART and has a memorandum of understanding with the American Red Cross of Central Massachusetts, she said.
“I can’t say enough about the (animal control officers) and the work they did immediately after the tornado. Kathy Shields, Southbridge animal control officer, and the first night she took in several animals, until their owners could claim them.
“The way the local DART teams work is they will respond if there is a need greater than the resources available to the local ACO (animal control officer),” she continued.
Mrs. Griffin said the CMDART volunteers were first deployed to a staging area in Wales, assisting in Brimfield and Monson.
As a professional disaster mental health worker, Mrs. Griffin said, it came as no surprise to her that while people talked about their pets, they were so overwhelmed by the scope and impact of the disaster on their own lives, their pets may not have been a priority.
Educating owners
The CMDART executive said a large part of what the group does is disaster preparedness education, so in the event of a tornado, or the December 2008 ice storm, people have an idea of not only what to do to help themselves, but to help their pets as well.
“The best disaster is one where people are so prepared in advance that an organization like CMDART doesn’t have to respond. That’s why education is such a large component of what we do, with as many as 30 events a year.”
“For us, the ice storm required a much larger response. In this instance, we’ve been used as a resource for responders to work with others, given that our organization of 120 members has a diverse skill level and background, from animal control to sheltering,” she said.
Information on CMDART is available at www.cmdart.org.
Sheryl A. Blancato, executive director of the Second Chance Animal Shelter Inc., said no dogs were being sheltered at the facility at 111 Young Road, East Brookfield, because all had been reunited with their owners.
Mrs. Blancato said Second Chance volunteers partnered with the SMART team starting last Friday and all of the displaced dogs brought to the shelter had been picked up by their owners.
“We have several cats whose owner can’t care for them immediately; an adorable 3-month-old kitten that one of our foster moms is bottle feeding; and one cat yet to be claimed,” she said.
The Second Chance founder said that through the shelter’s Facebook site, folks have been reaching out and volunteering to meet demands for food and supplies, which in turn were brought to the command staging areas.
“Now we’ve got Joe Craig loading up and making a trip every day, dropping off things folks have specifically requested,” Mrs. Blancato said.
“We still have a good supply of dog food, but canned cat food and cat litter has been flying out of here. We’re sending a couple of hundred pounds of supplies a day, for those people who can’t get out on their own.”
Mrs. Blancato, who assisted with disaster response and pet rescue after Hurricane Katrina, said helping in an unfamiliar area is far different than traveling to an area you know well and finding that the entire landscape has been irrevocably changed.
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