Interested in helping out during a disaster? San Diego Humane Society’s Humane Law Enforcement department offers a wide range of volunteer opportunities through its Animal Rescue Reserve (ARR), a team of trained volunteers who assist during disasters by safely evacuating horses, livestock and smaller pets.
“We’ve recently opened up new opportunities with ARR for those who want to help with a disaster but not necessarily go behind fire lines,” says Jones. “For people who want to educate, we’ve created an ARR community engagement department to teach others about being prepared with large and small animals. For people with great organizational skills, we have an incident command center; and for people who do want to go behind fire lines, we train scouts and handlers to be comfortable rescuing scared, stressed animals from trapped situations.”
Volunteers for ARR must complete training and a background check, and commit to attending a certain amount of ongoing training throughout the year. Visit sdhumane.org for more information.