Eastern Region

Tennessee’s Disaster Animal Response Team (DART) credentialing process is designed to assist communities in developing an emergency team capable of responding to a variety of disasters, both natural and man-made. Responders are volunteers from many backgrounds and include veterinarians, animal health technicians, County Extension Agents, Animal Control Officers, exotic animal specialists, livestock producers and the general public. Additionally, DART members also should include local Emergency Management Agency personnel, health department, law enforcement and fire/HAZMAT personnel. The ideal DART should include a wide variety of expertise that could provide a multi-layered response to any animal/agricultural disaster that might impact a local community.

Credentialing for Tennessee DART members is a three part process. You must attend one of the classroom trainings that covers Tennessee’s Emergency plan and ESF-16, foreign animal and emerging diseases, Biosecurity and the Incident Command System. Also, there is a requirement for all DART volunteers to complete three on-line Incident Command System (ICS) courses (at no cost) and to sign a Code of Conduct.

The ICS courses are ICS-100, ICS-200 and ICS-700. They are available through the Emergency Management Institute’s on-line course website. The link to register for the ICS courses is: http://www.training.fema.gov/

Ray Burden, County Director, Hamilton County, works with the TN Department of Agriculture to provide DART credentialing for Eastern Region counties. He may be contacted at (423)855-6113 or via email at rwburden@utk.edu.

TN Department of Agriculture DART Brochure

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