County prepares animal disaster plan

Sharon Cornett, president of the Richmond Animal League, with Petey, a pit bull she rescued in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina Lisa Billings/Chesterfield Observer In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Sharon Cornett, president of Richmond Animal League (RAL), traveled to Tylertown, Miss., where she helped set up an emergency animal shelter on the grounds of St. Francis Animal Sanctuary. There was no plan in place for how to handle the hundreds of animals that were lost or abandoned during the storm; she and a slew of other volunteers simply made it up as they went along. It was exhausting work, but Cornett describes it as some of the most important of her life.

Flash forward five years later, and Cornett is helping RAL establish a County Animal Response Team (CART) in partnership with Chesterfield County so that animals in our region can be saved during times of emergency and ultimately reunited with their owners.

“One of the things that happened after Hurricane Katrina is the federal government mandated that when a locality declares an emergency and they set up people shelters, that locality must also set up animal shelters,” said Cornett, who made three separate trips to St. Francis Animal Sanctuary, where she now serves on the board of directors. “That means that every county, every parish, every city in this country has to have some sort of community animal response team.”

Chesterfield started dealing with pets 17 years ago, according to Curt Nellis, the county’s coordinator of emergency management, but the county has decided to enhance its emergency operations plan for animals. In June, the Virginia State Animal Response Team (VA SART), which was established in 2006, held a summit at John Tyler Community College to address how to organize CARTs. So far, three communities – Fluvanna, Chesapeake and Hampton – have established state approved CARTs. Chesterfield hopes to be the next.

“Animals are part of people’s families now,” said Nellis. “That is a concept that emergency management has embraced here over the years. They’re a part of the whole response package. We’re going to be a better community for that.”

“It’s the No. 1 reason people won’t evacuate,” added Amy McCracken, RAL’s executive director. “They won’t leave their pets behind, and often there’s no place for them to go with them.”

The county’s plan addresses three types of animals: pets, equine and wild. County cooperative extension will deal with equine, which includes horses, llamas and alpacas, while the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries will handle the wild animals. RAL is spearheading the effort to organize the rescue and management of pets like dogs and cats.

“The Richmond Animal League’s role is to organize the team, get the team trained and serve as the liaison [to the county] in the event that we are deployed,” explained Cornett. “Volunteers for this team are going to come from all over the community.”

The county and RAL are now working on setting up training for potential volunteers next spring, an undertaking that will be funded by federal grant money. In the meantime, RAL and the county will determine a CART location, create an organizational chart, appoint volunteer managers and offer preliminary training in Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) disaster preparation, first aid and CPR – prerequisites for CART training.

Nellis described the public-private partnership as a “perfect relationship.”

“We’re going to be shoulder-to-shoulder with them when we do exercises and training,” he said. “A lot of this is establishing relationships. That probably is more important than any plan that I could write or anything I could buy for them. Three o’clock in the morning is not the first time I want to meet these people.”

And while it may seem unlikely that Chesterfield County will have a declared emergency – even after Hurricane Isabel, an emergency was not declared – chances are CART will be called upon eventually.

“Chesterfield County is an evacuation point for the people in Hampton Roads,” explained Cornett. “The county could be flooded with half a million people coming from Hampton Roads and Virginia Beach. That’s where we really think this is going to come into play. We need to be ready in the event that happens.”