DART, at least this version of the Disaster Animal Response Team*, is a by-product of Hurricane Katrina. In 2005 a large hurricane hit the Gulf Coast. In addition to hundreds of human lives, many thousands of animal lives were lost. Both humans and animals were the victims of neglect and the overall failure of the official emergency infrastructure to prepare for a major disaster. Within hours of the hurricane passing levies were breached and hundreds of people and their pets were in mortal danger. What followed represents the best and the worst in people. A handful of rescuers (including staffers from Best Friends Animal Society) immediately went into the toxic waters to rescue people. Some even rescued pets. But most did not. There were horrific scenes of people refusing to leave without their pets. We now know that some of them did not survive. We also know from research done afterward that the vast majority of those who died in New Orleans had pets, had been told they could not evacuate with their pets, and had told their neighbors that this was one of the reasons why they decided to stay.

Katrina was man-made carnage. Not only had there been ample warning that the levees were too weak to withstand a major hurricane, simulations had already predicted a death toll far surpassing the actual death toll of Katrina. In some ways Katrina turned out to be less destructive than it could have been. As Americans saw these events unfolding on their TV sets, anger rose and erupted in a massive rush to rescue as many people and animals as possible. The authorities were unable to stop this tsunami of volunteers converging on the Gulf Coast. Road blocks were ineffective. Thousands descended upon the Gulf Coast. These convergent volunteers - not the trained, official emergency responders who hunkered down in their command posts, are the heroes of Katrina.

When the convergent volunteers returned from Katrina - many of them six to nine months after the event - they knew very well that Katrina was not a 'Louisiana thing'. Katrina could happen anywhere. So they started to look around and see what could be done before a disaster struck, to prepare people, to train people to save their communities. Today, in 2010, you can find a large number of Disaster Animal Response Teams (DART), County Animal Response Teams (CART) etc. We are all brothers-and-sisters-in-arms and we are the by-product of Katrina.

CERT/DART Concept Born (2006)

This version of DART was born in 2006 in the hills of Lamorinda, three small towns in Contra Costa County (San Francisco Bay Area). Convergent volunteers returning from Katrina found that there was no support for animals in disasters in the Bay Area. What we did find were 'people only' Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT). Some of us joined our local CERT and raised questions about animals and disasters. Most of us received the answer that CERT was only concerned with saving humans. That did not stop us. We knew that the laws of the land were changing as a result of Katrina. In 2006 the PETS Act (Pet Evacuation and Transport Standards) proposed by Northern California Congressman Tom Lantos. It was passed and signed into law by President George W. Bush. We also knew that more than 60% of the population had pets and that this included CERT members. CERT could be saved from itself.

In the Lamorinda area, CERT was open to change and it became clear to the Katrina animal responders that this CERT could indeed be the perfect base for a local animal disaster response team. The CERTs already know how to rescue humans. All that is needed to train some or all of them in animal search and rescue and animal sheltering to enable CERT to deliver the support for pets and their owners required by the PETS Act. That is when the DART concept was born: it was going to be the animal sheltering branch of a CERT organization. 

Even though we were convergent volunteers during Katrina, we were not untrained volunteers. Some of us had received animal disaster response training from Noah's Wish, others came from United Animal Nations, others were with Best Friends Animal Society. So, in 2006, Frans Hoffman started to assemble a training, incorporating the best practices of all the established national organizations and adapt it to CERT. Our work was made easier by the first (and only) Best Friends Rapid Response training in 2006 for which Best Friends staffers had done a lot of work, compiling what at that moment was the state of the art in animal disaster training. In 2006 we took this into the Lamorinda area and started holding public meetings to discuss the lessons of Katrina.

The PEP-Team: A Shooting Star (2007-2008)

By the Fall of 2007 some of us (Frans Hoffman, Linda Swanson, Charlie Crosby) teamed up with Contra Costa County Animal Services (CCCASD) who had recently received a grant to develop a county-wide Pet Emergency Preparedness Team (approved by the Board of Supervisors on 9/11/2007).

Frans raised the idea of using local CERT groups as the basis for this PEP-team and advocated decentralization. Unfortunately, the time was not ripe: the PEP Team had to be a county-wide team, under the control of Animal Services, according to the officer and the project manager. It would recruit volunteers for this countywide team from many different sources (such as animal rescue groups, the Contra Costa County Veterinary Medical Association, veterinarians, veterinary technicians, cattleman's associations, horseman's associations, CERT, etc. etc.).

Recognizing that this flawed PEP-team would be a step forward over the existing situation (no animal sheltering capactiy at all), Frans agreed to adapt his CERT based training manual to accommodate the centralized approach championed by CCCASD and its project manager, Tracey Stevens-Martin (Humane Education Coordinator). Unfortunately, the PEP Team died without holding even one training, when Tracey was hired away by UC Davis, taking the program with her (the CCCASD PEP Team program quickly resurfaced - but still as a top-down approach and still based on a myriad of groups, not jut the trained first responders of CERT - at the International Animal Welfare Training Institute at UC Davis.

All that is left in Contra Costa from the PEP Team days are three poorly stocked emergency trailers at Contra Costa County Animal Services. A waste of time and (state and federal) money... This half-completed program was not the way to build a viable emergency response team for the animals and their owners.

CERT/DART Implementation (2008 - 2010)

The PEP-Team debacle provided an opportunity to return to the decentralized disaster response based on CERT, which we had been advocating long before PEP. Through a series of CERT-sponsored public meetings we built a team of more than 30 volunteers who in the Fall of 2008 established the Lamorinda Disaster Animal Response Team (DART). Our first training took place in January 2009 and our first deployment (to the Lockheed Fire in Santa Cruz) followed a couple of months later. Today there are several other DART groups forming, we have friends in Shasta County who have established a DART and there are DARTs in South Carolina and Virginia. Recently Walnut Creek DART was established.

Standalone DART (2010 - Present)

While we value the work that CERT is doing as far as awareness and preparedness are concerned, we have come to realize the shortcomings of the CERT model for disaster response. At least in Contra Costa CERT volunteers tend to focus more on the social club aspect than on becoming well-trained disaster responders.  Undoubtedly, they will be able to do a lot of good for their families and neighbors when a disaster strikes. But in our experience CERTs rarely exceed the level of preparedness seen in a 60's British comedy series: Dad's Army.

In Contra Costa County we contnue to work with Animal Services to establish a County Animal Response Team. Unlike the ill-fated PEP-Team Contra Costa CART (CoCo CART) will not have its own band of volunteers or own its own "stuff" (like animal emergency trailers - that is the County's responsibility). It is a coordination committee of local DARTs (under city EOC) control) led by Contra Costa Animal Services.This is the approach we originally proposed in 2007. Let's hope that in 2010 the time is finally ripe for a decentralized approach to animals and disasters...

With our recent expansion we believe that the time is right to set up a DART Training Institute. You can find us at usDART.org .

So, here we are: a community based disaster animal response team.

Welcome to DART. In a disaster we will be the only animal first responders you will see for quite some time.

* DART has been around for a while. One of the best known implementations is N-DART, an activity of the Humane Society of the US, which is a national disaster response team, assisting HSUS staff.