September 2005 Helpful Hint with Links - Disaster Preparedness

Each quarter we offer a horsemanship hint, often related to current affairs on people’s minds.  September is National Preparedness Month and Hurricane Katrina inspired September’s hint. 

Most people experience at least one fire, car accident and storm in their lives.  Bear with me, as I tell you some short stories that, over my half century have taught me that every household and barn needs emergency plans and supplies.

Disaster Preparedness

When I was thirteen, one summer morning boys playing with matches started a fire at the mouth of the box canyon behind my Southern California home in the foothills of the Angeles Crest National Forest.  The narrowing canyon ran about 12 blocks north to its top, with some homes on the rims, especially at the tip, but most, like ours, set back from the rim several acres.  It was impassable on the slopes, filled with tinder dry scrub oak, poison oak, and dead spring grass. The fire stalled its forward progress, consuming the walls, as heat built up ahead, then exploded in 50 yard jumps up the narrowing canyon and up its sides, catching the tops of pine trees on the rims. 

Alerted by the first smoke, Grandfather and I stood on the rim and watched it coming.  He and said in a calm but gruff voice “Get animals away from trees next to water, do it now.  I’m going to start the sprinklers, water the roof, then get your Grandmother into the car.  Meet me there.  Hurry.” Moments later my neighbor’s horses, freaked by the smell of smoke, burst through their pasture fence and our hedge into our garden.  The neighbors couldn’t get their halters on to lead them out themselves, and came running behind, halters in hand. I found myself running underneath a canopy of burning trees with my neighbors’ horses obediently trotting behind, through my yard, to temporary relative safety across the palm and pine lined street.  I will never know why six frightened horses decided I was their leader and they should follow me when I called to them.  It was eerily both scary and surreal, with no time to be scared.  I was amazed, as we reached the street, acres away, to see strangers who were neither police nor firefighters, running in.  “Get away!” I yelled.  “We want to get a good look at the fire!” they yelled back.  “Go back” hollered one of my neighbors bringing up the rear behind the horses.  Just then a lick of fire jumped over my house to the trees of the next neighbor up the canyon.  That turned the idiots back.

Curiosity seekers’ cars had blocked the fire trucks trying to get up the narrow residential road.  The horses were happily munching the lawn next to the swimming pool of our neighbor across the street from our house, as police used bullhorns to beg and threaten people to move their cars so residents could evacuate.  We sat in our car in the driveway, with my cats yeowlling under the front seats and waited for an hour before we could leave. Our house was spared because grandfather had installed rainbird sprinklers over the entire 12 acres and we never lost water pressure.  Our neighbor to the north had let her horses out of their barn near the canyon rim and herded them to her fenced front yard, where they huddled in the middle, away from the trees.  They coughed for weeks afterward, living in the front yard while her burned barn was rebuilt with a sprinkler system. But the fire consumed several houses at the top end of the canyon and tragically, two horses. No one knew they were trapped in the backyard of a neighbor who was gone for the weekend. 

After the fire, Grandfather built winding paths down into the canyon, added sprinklers, and planted its walls with fire-retardant dry climate rosemary and other herbs and native California Joshua and pepper trees.  When the rosemary bloomed the next year, the canyon smelled wonderful, and the deer, raccoons, skunks, coyotes, rabbits and opossums that lived there came back and thrived.

My freshman year at the University of Southern California I awakened to the San Fernando earthquake turning my waterbed into a thrill ride.  For three days phone lines were out or too busy and I could not reach my mother and grandmother in San Clemente to let them know I was okay.  A few months later a Pacific storm ate the cliffs along the coast, and houses a few blocks from Mom and Nana dropped onto the beach and into the water.

Living in Portland, I managed the Westin Benson Hotel when the city lost all power and the airport closed during Columbia Gorge and Willamette Valley ice storms more than once.  Businesspeople could not vacate their rooms, vendors could not deliver food for the restaurants, employees could not get to work, and every VIP in town was on the phone demanding a suite for his family because they had no light or heat at home or ability to cook.  I turned meeting rooms that had half baths into guest rooms with rollaway beds.

My husband and I witnessed the eruption of Mount Saint Helens from our front porch, and hosed ash that was turning to cement off our house, car and yard. For years afterward there were mountains of trees in the Columbia River that had been driven a hundred miles downstream.

In Phoenix, severe flooding of the Salt River washed out bridges between Phoenix and Tempe in the past.  Wickenburg, New River and North Phoenix have experienced flash floods that swept away neighborhoods. Huge wildfires on the Mogollion Rim and recently around Cave Creek have left pockets of stranded ranchers.

Thank goodness I have not experienced Mississippi River floods, Atlantic and Gulf Coast hurricanes, Kansas tornadoes, Chicago and New York blizzards.  But then, at more than half a century old, I still have plenty of time left.

In short, besides unpredictable disasters like terrorist attacks, at various times of the year each part of the country pays for its advantages with the predictable chance of natural disasters.  In Scottsdale our biggest risks are from severe thunderstorms with severe lightning, duststorms, and flash floods.  Fire is possible anywhere, anytime.

Modern Americans are not Mountain Men or Pioneer Settlers. But in my experience, both personal and from following the news coverage, compared to poor folks in many third world countries Americans are less prepared to cope with the loss of city services (clean water, sewer service, electricity, gas, etc.)  In our electronic age, people have become so dependent on infrastructure, government and social agencies, and technology that “roughing it” for a few days and always having certain basics stashed away for a “rainy day” is a forgotten art.  I meet successful, well-educated, responsible people all the time who occasionally camp or hunt. Still, they have never given a thought to what they would do in 110° Arizona heat if the car broke down with the baby and the family dog on the road to San Diego, much less how they would care for the two horses in their backyard if there was no water to the neighborhood for a few days.   

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, how prepared is your family for an Arizona desert emergency?

How about the horses?  Evacuation of horses is not a job for people who have never handled a 1,000 pound frightened animal that does not know how to load into a step-up trailer!  Did you know that there are different size hitches, and a borrowed truck’s hitch may not fit a borrowed trailer from a different neighbor?  In a water emergency, do you have 30-50 gallons of clean water per horse already stored?

Lesson clients, parents of summer day camp children and boarders may want to know that Del Camino has response procedures for emergencies such as fire, heavy storms, and floods.  The fire plan is posted in the barn.

Del Camino’s emergency plans put people first, but also include our beloved animals.

Do your family and business have a disaster kit for 72 hours for the correct number of people and pets?  If you can’t get home, do you have a 36 hour kit in your car for both people and pets?  Is it up to date with fresh supplies?  FEMA, the American Red Cross, and most state emergency agencies stress that:

1.        You should be ready to take care of your own first aid[1], food, water[2], sanitation and shelter for 3 days to 1 week.  Rescue/relief may not be able to reach you right away.

2.        Most emergency shelters cannot take pets.  You should already have a list of hotels/motels and/or kennels/animal shelters outside of the likely stricken area that do, so you can call ahead to reserve space and plan to go there, rather than a local shelter that will force you to leave your animals behind.

3.        Be prepared to “shelter-in-place” for days if there is no warning. 

4.        Commit to evacuating when the authorities call for “voluntary evacuation”, don’t wait for “mandatory.”    Otherwise, routes may be too clogged and gas supplies too depleted.  If you are trailering horses, you don’t want to be stuck in traffic or gas lines for hours and may have a long drive to the “guest barn” in bad weather even without traffic.  Have a map in case the most direct route is washed out or impassable due to downed trees, power lines, or roadblocks.

5.        Don’t forget photocopies of important personal information, ready cash, and prescription medicines for people and pets in your emergency kit.

6.        If you have livestock at home, you need both a shelter-in-place plan and emergency contacts to help transport horses to safe stabling if passable roads allow a trailer access to get them out.  Identification, ownership, and health records may be required to get them into a host stable or temporary stabling at a rodeo, racetrack, or showgrounds, and are almost always required under livestock laws for crossing state borders.

7.        Identification tags and feeding/handling notes must be attached to pets or livestock you are forced to leave behind to fend for themselves, and signs posted.

Every person who is responsible for a child, a disabled or ill or aged person, a pet, or livestock, has a moral duty to have disaster supplies and emergency plans.  You don’t need to become a survival expert, and you don’t need to spend a fortune.  But putting a little thought into it, and gathering supplies and phone numbers for the barn, car, and house will give you a much better chance of having an exciting, rather than tragic, story to tell your grandchildren.

Adults who attend our horsemanship class receive excellent training and materials to help them plan and assemble equine identity, first aid kits, and emergency plans. In hands-on practice they learn to confidently handle horses, give first aid, and organize safe stabling.

Here are some helpful links to get you started:

FEMA Are You Ready A Guide to Citizen Preparedness

American Red Cross – Be Prepared

City of Phoenix Emergency Management Program

Maricopa County Emergency Management Operations Center

Equipped to Survive (article on commercial site for assembling human disaster kits)

Disaster Preparedness – AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) Good Information for Small Animals and Equines

Maricopa County Animal Care and Control Services
(602) 506-PETS (7387)
www.maricopa.gov/pets/

Arizona Humane Society

Arizona Equine Rescue Organization (AERO)

United Animal Nations

United States Equestrian Federation article on Equine Evacuation prepared by the American Association of Equine Practitioners Emergency & Disaster Preparedness Committee

Equine Friends Rescue Network

Persons Responsible for Livestock Need a List of Emergency Numbers Prepared in Advance.  Here’s an example:

Prepare this list now before a disaster strikes. Include addresses and 24-hour contact numbers, if available. These contacts can be used by rescue personnel responding to a disaster affecting your animals or by you during a disaster or an evacuation. Keep one copy near your telephone and one copy in your animal evacuation kit.

• Numbers where you may be reached (pager, cell phone, work phone)
• Your prearranged evacuation site
• Local contact person in case of emergency when you are not available
• Out-of-state contact person in case the disaster is far reaching in your locale
• Your veterinarian
• Alternate veterinarian (30-90 miles away, provides boarding)
• Boarding facility (local)
• Boarding facility (30-90 miles away)
• Hotels that allow pets (90 mile radius)
• Local Animal Control
• Local Police Department
• Local Fire Department
• Local Public Health Department
• Local Animal Shelter
• Local Red Cross Chapter
• Local Humane Society
• Local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA)
• United States Department of Agriculture Missing Pet Network (www.missingpet.net)

Additional contacts for equine/livestock owners:

• State veterinarian
• State veterinary colleges or land grant colleges of agriculture
• Private stables/farms
• Racetracks
• Fairgrounds
• Show grounds
• Stockyards
• Equestrian centers
• Local haulers or neighbors to help with transportation
• Feed distributor (local feed stores may be closed or run out of stock)

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