Many people have seen a daring helicopter rescue of horses or other
animals stranded during a natural disaster.
It makes good television, the vice-president of the American Academy on
Veterinary Disaster Medicine told a recent Regina conference, but those
rescues cost a lot of money.
Sebastian Heath said the helicopter, sling and people needed to rescue
one animal costs about $20,000.
“What else could you be doing with that money?”
Heath suggested it could be spent printing bro-chures to educate people
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about how to prepare themselves for disasters.
Producers must think ahead and take care of the small things, he said.
Preparedness is key.
Media coverage of disasters involving livestock presents a terrible
image of agriculture that the industry can’t afford, Heath said.
“It’s local preparedness that is most effective. That is the challenge
we face. It’s not how we respond to a disaster.”
Between 70 and 90 percent of disaster-related costs are due to small,
localized disasters, he said, not the large-scale events covered by
media.
Heath said weather – mainly heavy rain and wind – causes 90 percent of
disasters.
He showed photographs of trees that caused significant damage simply
because they hadn’t been pruned after an earlier storm.
He also showed a picture of cattle standing underneath two large trees
in the middle of a field, saying it is a disaster waiting to happen.
Cattle tend to congregate under trees and a lightning strike could kill
many of them.
Heath suggested providing alternate shade sources, perhaps even movable
ones.
“These small things escalate and cause major catastrophic losses.”
A common scene during floods is of livestock stranded on small patches
of higher ground.
Heath said producers must consider where to put their animals in the
first place.
“What happens when the driveway floods?” he said.
“You’re going to have problems getting on and off the farm. Think small
scale. What can you do on your own farm?”
He said producers who let their hogs out of the barn as water rises,
thinking they will escape, are wrong. Hogs will congregate close to the
building.
Heath showed pictures from a flood where the hogs that didn’t drown got
onto the roof, but they fell through and died when the building
collapsed.
“The obvious solution is that farm should not have been in a flood
plain,” he said, adding the producer should also have had an evacuation
plan.
In some areas, farmers build mounds of dirt in their fields that are
large enough to accommodate their entire cattle herds.
Heath said agricultural runoff is another problem during floods.
Producers need good lagoon management systems in place to make sure
they can contain manure, pesticides or both.
Debris that blows into fields is the main problem after tornadoes and
strong windstorms.
A farmer not directly hit by a tornado may still bear the cost if his
calves start chewing on insulation that blew into the pasture.
Heath also said farmers must locate and construct buildings with
disaster prevention in mind, and consider such things as whether heavy
snow will cause a roof to collapse and whether there is an alternate
power source.
