Sorry to have been so scarce. The Butler II Fire evacuation took me out of town and once back, it took a while to settle in. Even just Sunday, I ran into flames nearby during a hike.
Anyway, you might imagine it is unsettling and distracting. Nobody tells you about the post-evacuation blues. It is hard to sleep, concentrate, and get back to normal life. I’ve spent a lot of time nesting and visiting with neighbors–cathartic.
So now I am just attempting to catch up. I recorded an audio of my recently updated Animal Disaster Preparedness for Pet Owners & Pet Professionals. It was completed in August due to a request from a University Library–they wanted a copy and I didn’t want to send them the 1999 edition. Kind of funny how the universe works.
Also, One of my editors wrote me back to say that she hoped my August/September column titled, “Fire! What about pets?” would not be needed. I’d say it was since the first fire hit over Labor Day Weekend and was followed by another one about less than two weeks later.
We did have problems housing animals. This county doesn’t consider pets and animals to be top priority. I managed to get in contact with the Incident Command Center to give them some resources and the contacts they need to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. I run a local gossip rag and got the info out to everyone when it was needed.
What I didn’t know was that each Red Cross Chapter operates independently. So the one I talked to in Las Vegas was pretty proactive with animals but the one here actually turned people away–and never mind that they only had 12 people show up to stay there.
Locals around here put people and their animals up and the Red Cross shelter was really empty…those with animals were upset about it and even more so when the community meeting leaders (there to update us on the status of the fire during our evacuation) could not even give any direction or information on that issue.
So, I am almost functioning now–which is good since I am heading out for a Blessing of the Animals over in North Hollywood. If you have been a reader for a while, you’ll realize that my last book ties into the Blessing of the Animals events that will be taking place all this week in conjunction with World Animal Day and St Francis Feast Day. You can read more and find blessings near you at my book blog over at http://www.blessingoftheanimals.com/blog_book_buzz.html.
I’ll be back on the blog with a few other tidbits I discovered while in Las Vegas–and I am hoping to catch up on all the pet and animal related news. It is going to be less frequent than usual but I am sure you will understand.
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