Who we are . . . is you . . . because during a disaster it's on us to help our community during those initial hours of a disaster. It's you . . who love and care about animals when they need us most, which is when a bad thing happens. We are you . . . who do believe disasters can happen here and you believe, as we do, that it is better to be trained, equipped and ready vs having to scramble and waste precious time when it matters most.
Many people do not evacuate because they have no place to go to bring their animals. We want everyone and every pet to have a safe shelter and the care they need during a disaster. Please help us be there for them.
Ultimately, we will be vetted, trained, equipped, packed and ready to deploy to provide pop-up sheltering across the UP. Our goal is to be able to provide transportation, co-located sheltering to human shelters to allow for evacuees to help care for their pets in a safe and secure environment. We will be trained in monitoring animal health, daily care needs, sheltering for strays from the disaster, reunification with owners, and more.
There will be training sessions through the year practicing shelter set up, animal intake, daily care tasks, reunification, managing supplies/logistics/donations, returning the shelter site back to original condition, packing, cleaning and being ready to do it again.
All training follows Incident Command System guidelines, partnership building with local disaster and emergency services, as we do not self-deploy.
Public education with webinars, in-person lectures, social media, attendance at community events and more so our animal owners can make their family and animal evacuation plans in advance of a disaster.
To be disaster ready, we all need a plan, a place to go, a ride to get there and TIME to evacuate early. Please help us make this happen in the UP.
