Florida VETS Team Helping Vets and Owners
On Friday morning, Oct. 28, John Haven, Director of the Veterinary School at the University of Florida and head of the Veterinary Emergency Treatment Service (VETS) Team, said, “It’s been an interesting two days. Got a call this morning from Pal
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On Friday morning, Oct. 28, John Haven, Director of the Veterinary School at the University of Florida and head of the Veterinary Emergency Treatment Service (VETS) Team, said, “It’s been an interesting two days. Got a call this morning from Palm Beach Equine (veterinary clinic), and they are running on a generator and are fine with fuel. They’ve been performing surgeries at their practice. They’ve got 300 stalls in their barns and have been holding some animals (evacuated from Hurricane Wilma) there. But, their fleet of emergency vehicles is running low on fuel.”
He and Cynda Crawford, DVM, PhD, were driving in Saturday morning (Oct. 29) with 180 gallons of fuel. “I’ve got two big tanks in the bed of my truck,” explained Haven. “Our truck will be classified as an emergency vehicle, so we can go into emergency sites. We’ve done that for a couple of places.”
Fuel shortages have been a major problem with electrical power outages over such a large area of south Florida. Many vet clinics have generators, but only a few days’ supply of fuel. In order to keep veterinary services available to the public, the VETS Team has been making frequent fuel supply runs into the hardest-hit areas.
One such fuel run was for a small veterinary practice in Belle Glade, Fla., on southeast corner of Lake Okeechobee. The practice’s owner is the only vet–large or small–for miles and her practice had been running on a small generator, and she was running out of fuel. “So we got her fuel so she can provide vet care,” said Haven
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Kimberly S. Brown
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