By JESSE GRAHAM
A CFA volunteer has set up an Australia-wide network for residents to protect their horses during the bushfire season, connecting owners with equipment in emergencies.
Panton Hill CFA member, Jenna Kelley, has established the National Equine Database, a website that aims to link property owners and horse and animal owners, to provide temporary housing during emergencies.
The way the website works is that people with equipment and room to house animals post on the website, and animal owners can reach out and make plans to meet up on mutually-agreed days of high fire risk.
“It’s based on the Fire Danger Rating index, and people have their own self-triggers to evacuate their animals,” she said.
“So my trigger is a Severe day – my horse goes the night before.
“Once the danger, for me, has passed, I’ll go collect him.”
Ms Kelley said that residents from Avonsleigh, Kooweerup and Lang Lang had signed up, but that she hoped the network would be utilised by people from the Yarra Valley, Dandenong Ranges and surrounds.
She said the database would help residents to become more conscious of fire risk, and to act when emergencies struck before hearing from emergency services, such as the CFA.
“In this way, we’re putting the responsibility back on the animal owners, and teaching them how to respond,” Ms Kelley said.
“They’re making their own decisions – they’re not waiting for someone to tell them what to do.”
She said the two parties would make arrangements privately about the timing of evacuating animals, as well as providing food.
The Mail last year reported Ms Kelley’s plans for the website, and she said the idea came about during her work at Australia’s Emergency Management Institute.
She said that she raised the idea with Emergency Services Commissioner, Craig Lapsley, who told her “You need to make it happen”.
Since then, she said she had been contacted by the Shire of Murray Council in Western Australia about the website, and that the group running the site would be looking for funding to run free talks for communities.
For more information about the National Equine Database, visit www.tepscon.community.
