By Brynn Morey
When we think about preparing for a disaster, we focus on protecting ourselves, our personal property and pets. However, it is important to remember that the place we love so much may need our help during difficult times.
We came together during Hurricane Irma, and I challenge you to be proactive with disaster preparedness. Sign up to volunteer or attend training that will help your community in a disaster. If we help to build a community that is trained and ready to react during a disaster, we will be better prepared for whatever mother nature has to offer.
The Monroe County emergency management team has created a fantastic county volunteer site with beneficial information for when a disaster strikes. It also provides a direct link to sign up and become a volunteer. Please follow the link below and review the information provided by scanning the QR code here.
Community members are needed in all types of situations – shelters, information hotlines, elder care, mental health care, interpreters, donation centers, pet shelters, general labor and much more. When you follow the Monroe County volunteer link, it will take you to a comprehensive questionnaire to determine your volunteer interests, spoken languages, certifications, training, licenses, program affiliations and more. Any skills you may have, even if it is just the ability to answer a telephone, can be useful during a disaster. Think about if you are a volunteer who has the capability to speak a unique language: the opportunity to help and comfort someone with a language barrier who is frightened and has just lost everything can be compelling.
Did you know? Florida has a state agricultural response team (S.A.R.T.). It is a planning, training and response support group with the aid of the University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciences, University of Florida college of Veterinary Medicine and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The S.A.R.T. website, flsart.org, is another that I encourage you to visit. It provides a helpful disaster preparedness guide offering information on sheltering in place with pets/animals and evacuation checklists for animals. It also offers free online self-paced training on pet-friendly sheltering, mental health, FEMA and more. Free online training only takes a little time but can make a tremendous difference.
Every time a storm heads our way the dedicated workers at the Florida Keys SPCA work tirelessly to evacuate as many shelter animals as possible. This is a very daunting task. The Marathon SPCA campus is unsafe to shelter animals during a storm, which only leaves the option of our Key West facility and volunteer fosters to keep our adoptable pets safe. I have quite a large crew of my own pets that I have to evacuate with; however, during Irma, my family fostered a cat. The shelter provided me with a carrier and food. We kept the cat safe until the storm had passed and the shelter was ready for her return. Visit the link provided below and make room for just one more during your evacuation:
https://fkspca.org/volunteer/become-a-foster-volunteer/.
There are many other volunteer opportunities available in this community. I encourage you to ask around, review community organization websites, sign up for training and become a volunteer. Peak hurricane season is right around the corner; find one thing you could do to help make our community stronger if a disaster occurs.
