The loss of many beloved animals, big and small, in the traumatic 2018 Kilauea eruption planted in many residents an urge for knowledge about how to rescue pets and livestock during disasters.
After years of planning, fundraising and coordination, that goal was realized last week with the first-ever Disaster Response Training: Animal Search and Rescue, an instructional cohort from Feb. 25 through March 1 hosted by the Big Island’s Hawaii Animal Kuleana Alliance and nationwide disaster response group Code 3 Associates.
Executive Director Syndi Texeira of Keaau founded HAKA after the eruption. In addition to the recent training sessions, HAKA has acquired special equipment from as far as the United Kingdom vital for rescuing large animals that have fallen into tight spaces, she said, and has raised about $130,000 of the $190,000 fundraising goal through donations since 2021 on top of receiving support from the Kilauea Recovery Grant Program.
Texeira added that the Puna Strong grant fund also helped make the training possible.
“We’ve been working not only with the county’s emergency defense and civil management, we’ve also built bridges between all the smaller rescues on the island,” she said. “It’s in our name, Alliance … we’re all sharing that same pot of funding, and it keeps getting smaller. So, instead of fighting over it, let’s figure out how we can work together and maybe build it out more.”
The 20 volunteers in the cohort, which includes a two-year commitment to animal rescue with HAKA, featured a mix of career animal service responders, firefighters, ranchers and volunteers hoping to bolster their love for animals with skills to save them.
Several participants also had history with disasters like the 2018 eruption, the 2023 Lahaina wildfire, and the January fires that decimated parts of California, including Regina Dodaro Romero Serrano, who used the cohort to reinforce important knowledge about effective preparedness, communication, and how to keep animals and their people calm.
“There’s always lessons to be learned in every natural disaster and emergency event,” said Serrano, who has over 25 years of experience in animal welfare roles, including vet tech, animal control officer, shelter director and emergency responder.
“There’s no denial that the human-animal bond is incredibly instrumental to working through natural disasters … so keeping people and their pets together creates a level of normalcy in a scenario where nothing is the same,” she said.
Calmly moving large animals such as livestock, often with little to no physical contact, was the focus of a training session on Feb. 28 at a Kulaniapia Falls farm.
“Pressure on, pressure off,” said instructor Andy Petrick of approaching cows from behind the shoulder to create forward motion, then backing off as a reward to keep it going. “Don’t crowd them,” Petrick added as volunteers worked in groups of three to move two medium-size black cows around an open pasture, where they learned crowding can spook the cows into stopping.
During times of verbal instruction amongst the humans, the young cows played with two friendly goats in the shared paddock, and the goats would happily munch ti leaves anytime a volunteer offered one. This gentle innocence and adorable play from the happy livestock only fed the animal adoration that drove the rescue efforts being taught.
Texeira said she was happy that a majority of the attendees were kanaka, and that several were quite young, proving Gen Z can carry the totem of animal stewardship into Hawaii’s future. The youngest volunteer of the group was high school senior Yuisa Nakamura, who made animal rescue her senior project and hopes to mobilize others her age using social media.
“I’m making an Instagram account about this to share with my school, because I believe that every school should have mandatory educational events like this so everybody on this island can know what to do,” she said, adding she thinks people as young as 12 or 13 would benefit from the training she received at the HAKA cohort.
She was around that age in 2018 when she took part in the Kilauea response, filling Red Cross pillowcases with supplies for the displaced that she then distributed with her family.
Nakamura’s favorite HAKA training day was the water-crossing exercise at the Kulaniapia Falls pool on Feb. 27, saying the skills she learned — especially to never attempt standing up while crossing swift-moving water to avoid possibly getting a foot caught in uneven submerged terrain, opting instead to float on one’s back — armed her with knowledge that could allow her to save herself and others someday at popular but dangerous spots in Hilo like Boiling Pots above Rainbow Falls.
“If I can, I want to help wherever I can,” Nakamura said. “I’m not going to put myself out there if I don’t have the proper training, but if I do and I have the opportunity, I would for sure go because I’m helping others out. I have everything I need, so now it’s time to share.”
Following a class-like presentation at Fire Station 3 on Haihai St. in Hilo and the cattle instruction on that Friday, the group made a stop at OK Farms, where a tight-knit herd of horses frolicked in a sprawling field of tall grass that overlooks downtown Hilo to the bay.
Some of the calmest horses were plucked from the group to help teach how to quickly secure a loose horse, determine their state of being based on the physical displays of their mouths, eyes, and ears, and fashion an emergency halter suitable for any animal out of a single lead rope.
Volunteers practiced focusing their eyes on the path they want the horse being led to take, because the animals detect imperceivable body-weight shifts from a person lowering one’s eyes, and the “pressure on, pressure off” technique allows a horse in motion to keep its head aligned with its shoulders for continuous forward momentum, Code 3 staff member Garret Leonard said.
He also taught how horses breathe exclusively through their nose to help volunteers avoid accidentally suffocating them during rescues, along with keeping the lead rope off folded in hand to keep it off the ground, and having the halter ready to quickly place on the horse’s head to keep the rescue smooth.
“It’s the people in a community that will repair the community,” Leonard said about the value of a trained community response. “They’re there 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. When a response team comes in, our time there is limited.”
Code 3 Associates has been on the frontlines of disasters across the country since its founding in 1985. One delay in last week’s cohort occurred when Colorado-based instructors Petrick, Leonard and Jim Boller were called to rescue animals in North Carolina from Hurricane Helene in January.
“We will never self-deploy,” Leonard said, echoing advice both Serrano and Texeira live by. “In any disaster response, if a team shows up that have not been asked, they’ll be asked to leave because … if they’re not properly trained, they end up being the ones that we have to try to rescue, in addition to what the work is.”
His final guidance was the importance of having an evacuation plan with human and animal go-bags prepped before any imminent threat, and responding immediately to evacuation orders.
“People will not evacuate their homes without their animals. They will die with their animals,” Leonard said, to which a passing volunteer voiced loud agreement. “The goal is to have a plan that you and your animals have a place to go.”
Email Kyveli Diener at kydiener@hawaii tribune-herald.com.
