EQUINE VETERINARY EDUCATION Equine vet. Educ. (2020) 32 (8) 397-397 doi: 10.1111/eve.13268
Editorial From barn fires to hurricanes: Helping animals in times of crisis
My initial disaster response involved a two-barn fire at a racetrack just 4 years into my career in 1974. When I arrived as the only veterinarian on the scene, the local fire stations were heading in with sirens blaring as horsemen attempted to manage approximately 900 horses. Few horses were injured from the fire but the onrush of a well-meaning fire department led to serious injury of three frightened horses, two of which never raced again. My baptism into large-scale disasters occurred in 2005
with Hurricane Katrina, which was predicted to make landfall in west Houston and Galveston Island, Texas. Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine’s Large Animal Hospital was selected to shelter/manage at-risk human evacuees. Despite being given just 48 h to prepare, we were able to move most hospitalised horses to other facilities. Dr P.K. Carlton and I were co-commanders in the Incident Command System (ICS) and, by the third day, we were thought to have received more human patients than any hospital in the country. We managed the first 3 days with two MDs, one registered nurse, veterinary clinicians and technicians, students and local volunteers before the US Public Health Service arrived with over 100 professionals. My learning curve regarding the essential ICS had begun. Following that successful effort, our Large Animal Clinical
Sciences Department began setting up and managing horse evacuations in subsequent disasters. This eventually led to creation of the Texas A&M University Veterinary Emergency Team (TAMU VET), which often responds with Texas Task Force I (search and rescue). My deployment with a small team from Texas A&M to Iraq in 2008 under military security to rebuild what had been an active agricultural entity further taught us how to perform daily amidst chaos. Ultimately, TAMU VET convinced the College of Veterinary
Medicine to create a required 2-week rotation in emergency medicine and management. Our team has responded to scores of disasters since. My appreciation and concern for the complexity and
difficulty of providing veterinary care has been renewed and reinforced with each experience. However, the provision of reasonably immediate assessment and care is still inadequate. Clearly, addressing human concerns like providing needed services (power, water, food, shelter, medical care, etc.) is a priority; animal welfare is secondary. The AAEP and its charitable arm, recently rebranded as
The Foundation for the Horse, have been helping such efforts since 2005. The Foundation, for example, provided the first
donation for a medically equipped trailer for the TAMU VET in 2010 and, ever since, has been organising a system to contact jurisdictions in harm’s way for needs and resources. AAEP members should be proud of the Association’s past, present and future endeavours to help horses, other animals and devastated owners. Here is how you can help animals in future disasters:
• Acquire training and learn how to effectively get involved with local, regional, state and national efforts. The 2020 AAEP Convention will provide unique and essential training. Sign up!
• Contact local emergency services regarding your interest in aiding in their individual plans to protect, save and return horses/animals to owners. Such engagement is overwhelmingly welcomed and accepted.
• Understand that emergency medicine is one animal at a time whereas disaster medicine/management can easily be multiple animals. Therefore, it is important to know triage based on multiple factors such as safe access to those injured; availability of useful resources (medical supplies, shelters, transport, etc.); personnel security; and access to supporting veterinarians and technicians.
• Encourage your respective College of Veterinary Medicine to include disaster medicine/management into its curriculum.
• Realise that every disaster begins locally – you are the only expert in managing animal injury. You know what resources exist in your community; thus, you are awesome.
Being a first responder is not always possible as one’s
availability varies from day to day; however, knowing how such responses are constructed means that all of us can be involved. This might be as a responder, a resource provider, a place to stay for responders, a medical expert via cell phone, an expert on horse handling and transport, temporary shelter provider and financial contributor – the list goes on as each disaster has its own needs. With training and understanding, we – the AAEP and the
veterinary medical profession – can upscale our collective ability to help.
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W. MOYER Billings, Montana, USA
Dr Moyer, 2011 AAEP president, lives in Billings, Mont. He retired from Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine in 2015 after 22 years with the university.
© 2020 EVJ Ltd
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