Willow Glen Resident
News
Photograph courtesy of Debbie Dulaney
New Homes: Many animals, including a Doberman pinscher, were left behind when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.
Emergency drill includes disaster aid for the county's furry friends
By Anne Gelhaus
In the event of a disaster, Santa Clara County agencies want to be sure four-legged victims have emergency shelter.
Police and fire departments, along with other emergency-response teams, are reworking the county's disaster-preparedness plan to include animals separated from their owners during an earthquake or wildfire.
A new federal regulation, adopted after Hurricane Katrina left many pets stranded in Louisiana's flood zones, requires local jurisdictions to account for animals in their disaster planning.
"We did learn from Katrina," said Elizabeth Leslie, spokeswoman for the American Red Cross's Silicon Valley chapter.
The local Red Cross applied these lessons on July 22 at a disaster-preparedness and -response event that included a pet shelter operated by the San Jose Animal Care Center, the Humane Society Silicon Valley and the Silicon Valley Animal Control Authority. The shelter was the first of its kind established by the Red Cross, which Leslie said makes sense given the prevalence of pets in the South Bay.
"In this valley, 60 percent of households have at least one animal," she said.
"Animals are family, and we have to take care of them," said Campbell Police Capt. Russ Patterson, who coordinated the pet shelter operations.
Volunteers who staffed the shelter that was designed for humans also brought their furry friends to the animal shelter next door, where pets could be fitted with a microchip to allow their owners to track them more easily if they wander away from home.
The pet shelter set-up also gave animal-relief agencies and Red Cross volunteers a chance to streamline the process for documenting pets when they are brought into the facility. It was also an opportunity develop a system that would reunite the pets with their owners in as short a time as possible.
Both shelters were set up at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds for Saturday's free event. At the 200-cot shelter for pet owners and other bipeds, Red Cross staff and volunteers provided food, child care security, language translation, communications and health services to volunteer disaster "victims."
Disaster-preparedness and -response agencies gave CPR demonstrations and showed individuals how to put together an emergency medical kit and evacuation plan.
Since South Bay residents are far more likely to be hit by an earthquake or a wildfire than a hurricane, Patterson said, local agencies are more focused on keeping people safe at home in a disaster.
"In this valley, there aren't a lot of situations where we have to do massive evacuations," he said, "but we still need to be prepared."
According to Patterson, the Red Cross event was intended in part to see how well various agencies work together in the event of an emergency.
"This is really a test of the Red Cross people and how they deal with people and animals coming into a shelter," he said.
