How would your barn operations and horse care be affected if you lost power at your barn facility for just one day. Local disasters of this type are unfortunately quite common. They force responsible horse owners to think through aspects of planning disaster recovery that are important to their horse farm or horse-related business.
Self-reliance is a crucial part of disaster recovery planning. It is your job and your responsibility to come up with a plan to take care of yourself, your family, and your horse. If you board someone else's animals, they will look to you to be the responsible person who takes care of their animals as your own.
Emergency management officials will attempt to provide assistance to people and animals affected by the disaster, but that should be reserved for the old, infirm and very young. You cannot expect anyone else to evacuate and take care of your animals.
Practice, Practice, Practice
Whether your facility houses two horses or boards hundreds, you should have an evacuation plan for every conceivable emergency, from barn fires and wildfires, earthquake and mudslides, blizzards or chemical spills to high wind events such as tornadoes, hailstorms and hurricanes. Everyone needs two levels of disaster preparedness-personal preparedness, which will take care of ourselves and our loved ones, and business preparedness, which includes resumption/contingency planning. Even if your farm is a hobby, it is important to plan for getting the doors open again.
Write these plans down and then practice them. In general, one plan can be applied to many scenarios, helping to focus your reactions to the danger. Being proactive will minimize the amount of time and expense to bring your operation back "online" and preserve more of your animals and your sanity. If you make these procedures part of your daily routine, you will notice a reduction in injuries to people and horses, as well as efficiency born of a routine.
Think back to your school days and those monthly fire drills. The school probably emphasized asking everyone to remain quiet and calm while following each other to a pre-arranged place where they could verify that everyone was safely out of the building.
Where are your clients (if you board) and the animals going to meet? Is there a safe route out of the building in case of fire, out of the neighborhood in case of a chemical spill, or out of your town in the path of a hurricane? If not, what will you do in your area? Have you driven through every road in your neighborhood to identify escape routes (remembering that officials may close off many roads to enforce the evacuation)? Do you have maps in every vehicle for reference in an emergency?
