When the massive Iron Fire inched closer to homes in June, Eureka, Silver City and Mammoth were all ordered evacuated. And while people can respond quickly, getting animals out can be a tougher task.
Celeste Park-Estes runs Celestial Zoo Pet Rescue in Utah County and fostered cats during the fire. She also tried to gather help for a friend to evacuate cattle in Silver City.
“The biggest problem was not that they didn’t have a place for them to go; it was getting them there.”
So, she used Facebook, posting on the Utah Animal Evacuation Network page to find volunteers to grab cattle and provide carts and trailers. Most of the time, fairgrounds are go-to spots for shelter when it comes to livestock. Some people in the Facebook group, however, offered their own personal farmland.
The page consists mainly of people posting where evacuations are or when they need help. The trail of comments that follow are people posting where they’re located and what they can offer.
Park-Estes said most evacuation efforts are people-focused, but that can leave out animals.
“A lot of times it does fall on the local rescues and stuff like that to try to help and bring in the overflow of animals that don’t fit in places and try to get them out,” she said.
Right now, finding places for pets and livestock to go in Utah during evacuations relies mainly on community networking like these groups.
Dr. Sabo, Utah’s animals in disasters coordinator, said people could be part of a Community Animal Response Team, but there aren’t any registered in Utah. That isn’t because people aren’t willing, Sabo said. It's because people are already proactive.
If there were response teams, they would essentially do what the community does now through social media, but working with the city and county animal coordinators. The teams would be able to identify what animals they would be helping and what services they would provide. Like finding grazing fields, training people in animal handling and first aid so they can send out evacuation teams and work with first responders.
Trent Wilde, an associate extension professor at Utah State University for Piute and Wayne counties, helped evacuate cattle when the Cottonwood Fire began to creep over the mountain.
“No one expected this fire to move as quickly as it did,” Wilde said. “There are several natural barriers that kind of historically would, maybe, have given us an opportunity to get ahead of this fire a little bit.”
One of those was a meadow on top of the mountain in Beaver County, and yet Wilde said the Cottonwood Fire burned through without hesitation. The blaze has burned more than 97,000 acres of land, destroying parts of the Eagle Point ski resort and neighboring cabins.
Wilde described how even as flames grew closer, cowboys were still riding up into the fire to save as many cattle as possible. Some people simply showed up to help where they could.
When it comes to helping neighbors, Chase Thompson, president of Ohana Rottweiler Rescue, said he was just trying to play his part. He recounted memories of past Utah and California fires when he just wasn’t close enough to help.
“When this [Iron] fire popped up, we were like, ‘Woah, that’s our neighbors. We have to jump up and help out,’” Thompson said.
This time, he housed six dogs for evacuees.
“When everybody came to drop their dogs off, you could just tell how stressed out and worried everybody was,” Thompson said.
Last year, he remembered hearing stories about owners having to open their house doors and hope for the best because they couldn’t take their animals.
“A lot of people have emergency evacuation plans, but then they don't really factor in the dogs and the birds and the cat and the horses,” Thompson said.
For those with animals, there are ways to prepare. State resources, including the Animals in Disasters program, offer planning checklists for animal evacuations.
Just as people are advised to plan for at least three days of resources, animal evacuation kits should mirror that. Kits should include vet records, clinic numbers, basic care like food, waste management, pet storage, handling tools like horse blankets, muzzles and hardware to repair chicken coops.
Sabo said that even during all the evacuations, they only received one call to come out and help. She reminded people that animals should already be in go mode when evacuation status is set to “ready.”
If animals are left behind, Sabo said they need to be somewhere that is safe for them and incoming first responders. There also needs to be a way to leave identification for later reunification, such as shaving contact numbers into their fur or leaving contact information taped on their ears.
