County response teams care about animals

Joan Lowell Smith By Joan Lowell Smith The Star-Ledger
on April 15, 2009 at 5:15 PM, updated April 15, 2009 at 5:19 PM
Marjorie O'Neill, a veterinarian at the Iselin Veterinary Hospital who runs the County Animal Response Team in Middlesex County, gets an enthusiastic greeting from a Walker hound named Cletus.

Remember the agony endured by victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2003 when rescue teams were not given authority to save animals, let alone to accept pets in shelters?

"Many people, some perched on their roofs, refused to leave without their pets," recalls veterinarian Marjorie O'Neill, Middlesex County veterinary coordinator with the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) and veterinarian of record for County Animal Response Team (CART), who remembers that well. Having lived in North Carolina for 12 years, she was all too familiar with hurricanes. That's where she became a vet at North Carolina State Veterinary School in Raleigh before practicing in New Jersey at Iselin Veterinary Hospital.

Learning the hard way
"When Floyd so devastated the east coast in May of 1999, we lost six million domestic and farm animals -- poultry, pigs, horses, cows and sheep," she says ruefully.

"The prevailing theory then was to leave animals behind with water," not much help when they were surrounded by impure floodwaters. This neglect inspired the formation of the State Animal Response Team (SART).

"North Carolina was the only state that had a CART program. By November that year our vet school had enrolled 72 students in a class to learn about emergency response," O'Neill says.

But it wasn't until the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2003 that the media blitz alerted the public to the vast numbers of stray animals running loose when many people were refusing to evacuate without their pets.

"Rescue personnel wouldn't even take service dogs. Some people actually died because they wouldn't leave their pets," says O'Neill.

Because of the enormous outcry from pet owners following Katrina, in 2006 the federal government passed the Pet Transportation and Safety Act, whereby people may now bring their pets with them in a disaster.

O'Neill explains: "Now all counties now have CART teams. If there's a disaster, manmade or natural, there are designated sites to house animals." Pre-Katrina, the Red Cross did not provide any help with animals but since Katrina, "They have relented if you want to open a shelter, but they do not operate any shelters. They just permit them."

Home disaster
In 1998, O'Neill had her own disaster when a fire broke out in her Woodbridge home. (She now lives in Metuchen.)

"The firemen wanted me to leave, but I wouldn't go without my cats," she admits.

Because she had more cats than the township allowed at the time, she bolted the front door and sneaked out the back with her cats in tow, jumped in her Hummer with them and fled.

"Emergency Management is great helping people, but sometimes they don't understand how people feel about their animals."

How things work
If your mind has frozen with a surfeit of acronyms, to clarify the confusion between Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) that takes care of people while CART runs the shelters and cares for animals.

"We welcome volunteers," says O'Neill, who now has 20 on call. "We want more to join our CART team."

It works like this: CART registers owners and pets in the shelter by putting matching ID bands on owners and pets. Volunteers guard the room 24/7 and only owners are allowed to touch their animals.

Those interested in volunteering don't need specific experience to be a member of the team, but anyone interested in joining the CART team is urged to enroll in an ongoing course at the Middlesex County OEM at the Sayreville Fire Academy by calling the OEM at (732) 727-9009. (O'Neill is the leader.)

To become a member of CART in other counties, call that county's OEM. To enroll in a comprehensive Disaster Animal Response Team (DART) workshop sponsored by HSUS in Cream Ridge, April 24 through 26, costing $125, check for details. FEMA also offers an online course. Check

When the Middlesex CART team is mobilized, retired police officer Richard Cieles and his wife, Michal, Middlesex County SPCA officers and Perth Amboy animal control officers, will spring into action. The busy couple also run PawsAbilities rescue group in Matawan.

"This is a relatively new concept that I am passionate about and I want it out to the public," says O'Neill. "We stand ready when needed, operating on the abiding principle of safety first and that means safety for both man and animals."