A man who recently made the move from British Columbia to Summerside, PEI, is hoping to establish a Canadian Disaster Animal response Team for Atlantic Canada.
Ron McConnell in on CDART’s National Board of Directors.
He says the organization was created in 2003 as a result of the wildfires that they had in the Okanagan area. Over 200 people lost their homes, and there were many pets involved as well, “People were reluctant to leave their homes if they had to leave their pets behind. The idea behind CDART is that if people don’t have the ability to get their own animals out, we will go in and get them for them. When someone comes in and says you have 15 minutes to evacuate, when people say they won’t leave without their animals, it creates a lot of conflict. If we can lessen that conflict and bring that stress level down, it makes it a lot easier. This would be during larger scale disasters obviously, like wildfires, floods, or an ice storm like we had in Northern New Brunswick last winter, but we have responded to things like apartment fires in larger cities.”
He hopes, if all goes well, they can have the organization up and running before winter hits.
Volunteers are currently being recruited.
To find out more information, email cdartatlantic@gmail.com.
