Interview! Cameron Moore, Program Manager, Million Cat Challenge

“Hurricane Irma’s reach was intense for shelters across Florida, but it will only help us to plan for future incidents.”

Cameron Moore is a return guest (head to Episode 61 for information on how she got started in the business) who is here today to discuss the hurricane relief efforts in Florida.

Cameron worked with Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program to do pre- and post-storm assessments for a majority of the 155 shelters in Florida. Volunteers were responsible for contacting shelters before the storm to find out what might be needed, evacuation plans and how to distribute supplies.

This also parlayed into working with shelters to get pre-storm animals out to safety so the shelters would have room for post-storm animals needing a place to go. When it came time to move these animals before the hurricane hit, the task proved challenging because carriers were in short supply, gas was scarce because of the mass exodus out of Florida, and traffic was so horrible it took hours to travel anywhere. It was a real eye-opener for Cameron on how to operate things in the future.

However, they were able to get seventy-three animals out of a shelter and into safety before the storm even touched the ground.

Cameron stresses the importance of having a plan in place before the storm. She also stresses how important shelters outside the direct path of a storm are in severe weather situations, because they can be in a position to take animals that need to be relocated. The key is never to be in a position where shelters have to euthanize pre-storm animals in order to make room for post-storm animals.

Overall, things went well and it caused a funding collaborative to come together in order to work smarter together for future events. Thanks to Petco and other charities, there are plans to set up a centralized website with a grant application to help post-storm shelters.

Cameron also discusses how to potentially approach hurricane season differently in the future, and how she loved seeing the increase in people who were evacuated to other areas being able to take their pets with them.

Here’s the link to the transport best practices webinar series. aspcapro.org/webinar-series-companion-animal-transport-best-practices

Listen to Episode #225 Now