Several local fire and volunteer fire departments are moving well beyond rescuing cats stranded in trees — they’re actually acquiring oxygen masks to help resuscitate pets caught in house fires.
Following the death and abandonment of about 600,000 pets in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Ines de Pablo, the founder of Herndon-based Wag’N Enterprises LLC., began to craft pet preparedness responses.
She got the “O2 Fur Life” program up and running in February 2008 – though business was slow at first.
“We didn’t have a PR team, and no one was really searching for pet oxygen masks online,” she said. “Everything escalated last year when the D.C. Fire Department contacted us.”
The company donated 11 pet oxygen mask kits to D.C.’s Fire and Emergency Medical Services department in October; once that happened, business started taking off, de Pablo said.
Local fire departments that have gotten kits from Wag’N include the Sterling volunteer fire department in Virginia and the Germantown volunteer fire department in Maryland.
“It’s a great partnership that we have with the pet mask program,” D.C. Deputy Fire Chief Kenneth Crosswhite said. “The beauty of it is, it was free.”
“We’re always looking to provide better customer service … to our citizens in the District,” he added. “It’s an additional tool.”
Other local fire departments, including Fairfax, Loudoun and Arlington counties, also carry pet oxygen masks as standard equipment. But de Pablo said pets often are an afterthought when it comes to emergencies.
“No one’s asking to choose between a human life and a pet life,” she said, adding, though, that once pets are out of the house, you need to be able to save them.
“It flies under the radar. … A lot of people don’t know what it takes,” she continued. “It’s still not taxpayer money in most cases — that’s one of the misconceptions.”
Since its inception in 2008, the “O2 Fur Life” program has provided more than 680 oxygen mask kits to over 290 fire, EMS and police departments across the United States and Canada.
The masks can be used on dogs, cats, ferrets, birds, hamsters, alpacas, wolves and many more species, de Pablo said.
