Press Releases - The Humane Society and Adoption Center at PAWS

Rescuers need trailer to travel

October 9, 2005
Daily News
By Angie Tool

     The six-person Disaster Animal Response Rescue Team led by Dee Thompson-Poirrier has been on the road a lot in the past year.

     Not by choice, of course. But, when storms happen DART hits the road sometimes before a hurricane even makes landfall. These women head for the soon-to-be stricken area, not knowing if they’ll be away from their homes and families for days or weeks, knowing that they’ll probably be rescuing anything from wildlife from a refuge to pit bulls still guarding their owner’s bodies.

     They don’t even know if they have a place to sleep when they finish a 15-hour day.

     Poirrier would like to remedy that problem, if someone has the means to help them out.

     She’s hoping to get a travel trailer donated to DART, the division of animal control based at the Panhandle Animal Welfare Society site

     “Not only could we use the travel trailer to help transport the equipment we need, but we could also use it here as a mobile spay-neuter unit,” Poirrier said. “The surgical unit is important to me, including an anesthesia unit, so we could go into impoverished neighborhoods to offer spay-neuter services to people who can’t make it in to PAWS.”

     She’d also like a trailer to make traveling into disaster areas more secure, to protect equipment from being stolen and to give her team somewhere safe to stay.

     “I joke that we’re going downhill, the first time we went out, it wasn’t a disaster scene and we have a room to stay in. The next time, where we were able to stay was two hours away, so we ended up camping out. In Punta Gorda, we slept on a shelter’s floor. For Katrina, we camped out for two and a half weeks,” she said. “We’re willing to tough it out, but I’d at least lie to offer these women somewhere safer and drier to sleep after working from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.”

     DART’s members were trained by the Humane Society of the U.S. to cope with animal rescues.

     That’s meant this group has done more than work to help pets after hurricanes, though.

     Their first job was helping law enforcement break up a major cockfighting ring in Vero Beach, where they helped not only deal with thousands of birds, but also the attack dogs trained to protect them.

     The nicknamed “SWAT Team” of animal rescue soon became the top choice for just about any crisis involving animal endangerment.

     In post-Katrina Mississippi, Poirrier quickly found that rescuing pets had a dramatic effect on human safety as well, in reassuring traumatized pet owners and keeping quarantined areas free from people hunting strays.

     “If emergency officials ignore the fact that there’s an animal issue, it will quickly become a people issue,” Poirrier said.

     Poirrier is eager to talk to people who might be able to help and show them photos of all the work her team has done. To find out more, call her at 244-0196, visit Animal Control on Lovejoy Road or email her at deepoirrier@earthlink.net