Page 141 - SPEEDHORSE April 2018

“You never know when a disaster is going to happen, but when it does, every little bit counts.”
The current board members of the Oklahoma Large Animal First Responders include Dr. Clayton McCook, Kevin Trimmell, Sidna Madden, Suzannah Gertsen, Gary Bell, Chris Kirk, Joe Mottershead, and Nikki Utt.
OLAFR responds to tornadoes, floods, wildfires and man-made disasters.
OLAFR has grown from three members to about 200 in the past five years.
volunteers who have agreed to re-home them until the owners are able to get them back,” Trimmell said.
Current goals for the OLAFR include continued expansion across the state. Eventu- ally, the organization would like to establish satellite responder teams in various locations, taking advantage of the local knowledge in each area.
As the weather continues to warm, tornado season soon will approach in Oklahoma again. For Trimmell, that means it will be the “busy season” for the first responders, who will be performing a variety of tasks ranging from search and rescue to medical care to re-homing displaced animals.
“Just helping out is the Oklahoma stan- dard,” he said. “Every part of it is extremely re- warding. There’s a lot of hard things that you see out in the field that, for the weak person,
it really gets to them if they’re not accustomed to seeing them. But, there’s also a lot of things that make you proud to be a volunteer and restore your faith in the humanity of people.”
Current board members for the Oklahoma Large Animal First Responders include Dr. McCook, Trimmell, Sidna Madden, Suzannah Gertsen, Gary Bell, Chris Kirk, Joe Motters- head, and Nikki Utt. McCook is the present chairman of the board.
Learn more about the organization at their website, www.olafr.org. The group also has
a Facebook page. If interested in joining the OLAFR, send an email to olafrteam@gmail. com. Volunteers must be at least 18 years old and already be members of the Oklahoma Medical Reserve Corps.
The OLAFR also accepts donations. To contribute, send to their PayPal account at olafrteam@gmail.com.
“You never know when a disaster is going to happen, but when it does, every little bit counts,” Trimmell said. .
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