Trained Kansas Animal Response volunteers have been notified and given the opportunity to respond under one of our national animal response partners as animal sheltering volunteers. Some Kansas animal response volunteers are also involved in the hurricane response through remote liaison and resource coordination efforts to support a partner response agency out of Kansas City.
Thank you to those in communities across Kansas who have asked how you can help the animals affected by Hurricane Harvey. The best way to assist is by funding a legitimate animal response organization that is involved and donate money so that supplies can be purchased to help shelter and care for the displaced animals. Be sure you know the organization you are donating to as sadly, scammers will take advantage of this situation.
If this disaster has inspired you to get involved then please take time to first sign up to be a volunteer for the Kansas Animal Response Coalition; and second, to take the required response training to become a certified animal responder. Click here to learn more about how to sign up and where to go for training.
Thanks to the Florida State Animal Response Coalition for bringing their shelter awareness course to Kansas, the Kansas Humane Society for sharing their amazing facility and to the Red Cross for assisting with funding to make this training possible! What a great addition to the training program for animal response team volunteers in Kansas and thanks to the first 39 volunteers who traveled in from all over the state to participate. These amazing volunteers represented the KC Metro, North East, South East, South West and South Central regions! In July the train-the-trainer version of the sheltering course will be conducted and 23 of these amazing volunteers are returning to become instructors for this workshop. This means the workshop can be made available annually at the regional level! Beginning in 2017 level 2 -Shelter From The Storm workshop will be added to the training curriculum, which began with level 1 – Train Today Respond Tomorrow, for animal response volunteers. A third level, Operation Animal Response, is being planned for late 2017-early 2018 again collaborating with the Florida State Animal Response Coalition.
A huge thanks goes to the Florida State Animal Response Coalition for conducting a train-the-trainer workshop in Kansas. “Shelter From The Storm” will be added as the second level to the Kansas animal response training program. For a train-the-trainer workshop you need volunteers and a big thanks goes to the 20 animal response team volunteers who accepted the challenge to become Kansas trainers. Made possible through the generous funding support of the Red Cross and held at the beautiful Kansas Humane Society facility, this project is a shinning example of how non-profit organizations can pull together for the greater good!
Meet the new Kansas trainers:
Kelly Benton
Dayna Boso
Amber Bowlby
Jennifer Burns
Stacy Cleaves
Stephanie Grandon
Jesica Harvey
Carolyn Jergenson
Henry Kevern
Carla Lewis
Carla Longacre
Peggy Oertwig
Sherry Oswald
Sue Parks
Mary Prewitt
Beth Rowlands
Paula Schreiber
Dana Steffee
Laura Stein
Kent Thomas
With tragedies, sometimes there are silver linings. When an EF-5 tornado hit Greensburg 10 years ago, a large number of animals were displaced when 95 percent of the Kansas town was destroyed. Sadly, not many of the pets were reunited with their owners. That disaster brought to fruition, however, an idea that had been considered by several Kansas veterinarians a few years before: a statewide animal response team, or what Wichita vet Dr. Christen Skaer calls a “doggie and cat Red Cross,” to respond to catastrophic events that impact humans and their pets.
Again this year, the Sedgwick County Animal Response Team is partnering with Inter-Faith Ministries and Skaer Veterinary Clinic to provide pet food to those in need this holiday season! Last year, we supplied over 1,500 bags of pet food and expect the need to be greater this year! Monetary donations are being requested so that pet food can be purchased at a discounted rate, meaning we can make your donation go farther and help more pets! Drop your monetary donation off at any one of these businesses by Wednesday, December 14:
Skaer Veterinary Clinic
Indian Hills Animal Clinics
All Paws Pet Centers
Meritrust Credit Union locations in Wichita
Thank you for helping us help pets in need this holiday season.
The State Animal Response Team Coalition of Kansas was featured in the October KDEM planning and mitigation branch newsletter, “Planning Points” under the resource highlight section.
The State Animal Response Team Coalition of Kansas is emergency management’s resource for pets in a disaster in Kansas! This trained coalition of volunteers is prepared to provide temporary shelter and care for animals displaced in a disaster. They stand ready to deploy across Kansas at the request of emergency management. The Kansas State Animal Response Team (KSSART), the umbrella agency for the Coalition, manages policy, procedures and training for the local teams and provides coordinative efforts in a disaster. The local teams (county or regional) are the deployable resource and the public education advocates of the coalition. The regional/county teams are responsible for: educating the public on animal disaster preparedness and response (often at the county level by the regional sub-group of CART volunteers) and responding in disasters, when requested by emergency management, to provide temporary shelter and care for pets displaced by a disaster.
Point of Contact:
Kelly Benton KS SART Unit Coordinator
Kansas State Animal Response Team
6505 E Central, Box 160 Wichita, KS 67206
Office: 316-200-5347
Email: administrator@kssart.org
“Pet safety is human safety,” said Jeannette Livingston, Sedgwick County Animal Response Team Board Chair. “Folks will not evacuate or folks will go back before it’s safe to save their pets.” Read more…
April 4, 2016 – The Sedgwick County Animal Response Team signs a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Kansas Humane Society
The Sedgwick County Animal Response Team supports the Kansas Humane Society at a ribbon cutting ceremony that celebrated the installation of a generator to keep the power on at the Kansas Humane Society during a disaster. The two organizations took another major step together toward implementation of disaster preparedness plans for pets in the community by signing an MOU.
“It is exciting to see KHS working on disaster preparedness planning with the installation of the generator and the development of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Sedgwick County Animal Response Team. The two organizations worked together during the Oaklawn tornado, but formalizing this partnership will serve to further improve animal disaster response.” – Jeannette Livingston, Sedgwick County Animal Response Team President
Ribbon Cutting Ceremony for new generator at KHS
Pet Go-Bag Demonstration
Sharing animal response information at KHS
Partnership between the Sedgwick County Animal Response Team and the Ks Humane Society
The Kansas State Animal Response Team is pleased to accept two grants from the ASPCA Midwestern Resiliency Grant Program again in 2016. The first project the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) has provided funding for is the 2016 Kansas Animal Response Exercise scheduled for October 2016 at Crisis City. This will be the first state-wide animal response training exercise the Kansas State Animal Response Team has organized. The ASPCA was a strong partner in the 2015 Animal Preparedness Conference and the idea of partnering again with them in 2016 for a response exercise is very exciting. The ASPCA has also awarded funding to enable one Kansas State Animal Response Team representative to attend a highly recognized national animal response conference, the 2016 National Alliance of State Animal and Agricultural Emergency Programs (NASAAEP) Summit in May in Texas. This conference will offer valuable training and networking opportunities to help in the further development of animal response in Kansas. Thank you to the ASPCA for their continued support of animal response efforts in Kansas!
