WeHo/Santa Barbara, California (Thursday, May 14, 2009) - Wilted by the triple digit temperatures last Tuesday afternoon, I made a quick stop at Costco for an icy-cold chocolate vanilla swirl. Driving back home along Hollister Avenue, I noticed a small plume of smoke rise ominously in the mountains above Santa Barbara and thought, “Here we go again.”
I pulled over and reached for my cell phone to dial 911.
On the other end of Goleta, tucked away in a grove of majestic trees on Overpass Road, it was just another day at the Animal Shelter Assistance Program (ASAP).
Volunteers at the 20-year-old, non-profit cat shelter were busy cleaning cages, changing litter boxes, and making sure each of the 75 adoptable kitties felt safe and loved while they waited patiently for a new friend to come along and say, “I’d like to adopt this one!”
In just a few hours, everyone’s lives would be turned upside down.
Fueled by high winds and low humidity, the Jesusita Fire devoured everything in its path as it raced ever closer to hundreds of homes in the hills.
ASAP President, Angela Rockwell, was downtown when she, too, looked skyward and saw smoke. She immediately called Animal Services and asked if there was anything her organization could do to help. Their response: “How fast can you get here?”
It wasn’t long before ASAP began taking in evacuated cats, even though the organization is primarily a shelter for lost and stray cats. “We really don’t have a disaster plan in place; we don’t have a budget to deal with this sort of thing,” Angela acknowledged. “We were flying by the seat of our pants.”
Many of ASAP’s volunteers had been evacuated from their homes, but still they came in droves, ready and willing to help the cats in any way they could. They stayed into the wee hours of the morning, tidying up and making sure each kitty had a soft bed and a reassuring scratch under the chin.
During that first night, ASAP took in more than 60 cats; at one point the following day, they accepted about 50 cats in one hour.
“We were putting cats in carriers and dog crates—anything that was big enough to house a cat, a little box, and food and water bowls,” Angela said.
“We stacked carriers from the floor to the ceiling; we used every available inch of space. We did whatever we could to accommodate every cat who came through the door. We didn’t turn anyone away.”
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All in all, ASAP provided a safe haven for approximately 220 cats, all the while caring for dozens of adoptable cats who were already being housed at the shelter.
In a telephone conversation on Monday, Angela told me she was “blown away by the efforts and the open hearts of people who came out and did what needed to be done.”
She marveled at ASAP’s volunteers—who didn’t have any kind of formal disaster training—as they took evacuees by the hand and walked them through the process of checking in their cats.
“Just seeing the relief on people’s faces, knowing that their cats had a safe place to go; it was…hard to describe,” Angela said, her voice filled with emotion.
“It just means so much to be able to help people and be a part of a community like ASAP.”
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When asked about the future, Angela acknowledged that much work needs to be done to prepare for the inevitability of other fires. “This whole experience has certainly made us more aware of the fact that we need to create a disaster plan,” she says.
“We’ve never gone through an evacuation of this magnitude in Santa Barbara. Who’s to say it couldn’t happen again? We just never know, so we want to be prepared.”
As I thanked Angela for all she’d accomplished on behalf of the fire’s most vulnerable victims, she was quick to point out that it wasn’t the effort of one, but the toil of many that made an enormous difference for the animals.
“Hundreds of people came together to make all this possible,” she said. “I get to brag about ASAP because we did it without the support of a national charity or a big budget. We did it from a true, community-based grassroots effort. I’m very proud of that fact.”
If you would like to contribute to ASAP’s ongoing financial needs, please send a donation to ASAP, PO Box 357, Goleta, CA 93116. Send your thoughts to Karen Stevens at karenleestevens@cox.net. For more columns, visit allforanimals.com/forpetssake.html.
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