Prepare in advance to help animals in emergency Rapid Response situations

Worried about what will happen to the animals throughout the remainder of this hurricane season as well as in other emergency situations?

If so, here's all the information you need about how you can prepare to help Best Friends in the event of a disaster situation.

To become a member of the Best Friends Rapid Response team, you must have very specific training, and disaster responses are strictly managed by authorities in charge of each situation.

Team members are only deployed at the discretion of our program director and our national coordinator, depending on what’s called for in each case.

The Best Friends Rapid Response team is organized in compliance with the National Animal Rescue and Sheltering Coalition (NARSC), of which Best Friends is a member.

For the first level of response readiness (also known as “Awareness”) you need to complete five courses:
- FEMA IS-100 Introduction to the Incident Command System, I-100
- FEMA IS-200 ICS for Single Resources and Initial Action Incidents
- FEMA IS-700 National Incident Management System (NIMS), An Introduction
- FEMA IS-800.B National Response Framework, An Introduction
- FEMA IS-10 Animals in Disaster, Module A: Awareness and Preparedness

This coursework is available at http://training.fema.gov.

When you have completed these, as well as any other relevant trainings, please email the links to your certificates or send scanned copies to elleng@bestfriends.org.

We also highly recommend the following vaccinations and additional trainings. When completed, please send copies of the documentation for your file:
- Tetanus
- Hepatitis A
- Hepatitis B
- Rabies
- First aid and CPR classes (available through the Red Cross or the American Heart Association)

A full explanation of requirements for volunteers and the various qualification levels is available on the Resources tab on this community, located in the folder called "Requirements for Volunteers."

We also require that you create a volunteer file as follows:

If you are not already a member, join the Best Friends Network at http://network.bestfriends.org. Log in and choose My Membership Tools and then Edit My Volunteer Info to update your record.

- We need complete contact information, including snail mail address, on “My Member Profile.”
- Then click the small orange word Volunteer and provide two references with email addresses on the “My References” tab.
- We also need your unisex t-shirt size on the “Additional Info” tab
- Complete the medical information section of the “Additional Info” tab.

Questions? Please email Ellen at elleng@bestfriends.org.

Posted by Ellen Gilmore, Best Friends staff
Photo credit: taken by Molly Wald, Best Friends photographer