Animals in Disasters workshop, July 2013
Posted on the former site on 28 July 2013.
The former group said it planned, organized and sponsored a half-day workshop on 24 July 2013, hosted by the Metropolitan College of New York in lower Manhattan, for emergency managers and pet owners. It called the event a big success, with a broad mix of people who stayed engaged, especially during the table-top exercise of setting up an emergency pet shelter.
Who spoke, by role
- The group's volunteer training coordinator.
- The director of a New Jersey county animal response team and a former national director of disaster services at a national humane organization.
- A volunteer preparedness plan manager at a regional catastrophic planning team for the New York region.
- The coordinator of Nassau County's Community Emergency Response Team program.
- The president of the Long Island Parrot Society.
- Two guest panelists from a lower Manhattan CERT and animal search and rescue team and from a Westchester County animal response team.
The post printed speaker biographies. One said Nassau County's Sandy emergency pet shelter ran for over four months and housed 517 pets, and that every animal ended up in a home. Those are claims from a speaker bio on the group's own page, and we have no independent count. It also said Nassau County CERT had 1,500 trained citizen responders. The Parrot Society bio said its volunteers gave on-call help during Sandy, caring for exotic animals like a budgie, turtles, fish and a rabbit.
A newsletter wrote the event up too. See the CERT newsletter extract.