2026 Responses
Response Activities
California Flooding
Following significant flooding in Southern California, ZDR3 provided remote support to a heavily impacted facility. While all animals remained safe, the organization faced the complex challenges of restoring operations, supporting staff, and maintaining their critical community services throughout recovery.
Working closely with facility leadership and staff, ZDR3 provided structured recovery guidance and strategic communications assistance to help prioritize needs and coordinate messaging. ZDR3 also coordinated with the Association of Aquatic Life Support Operators (AALSO) to help connect the facility with replacement life support system equipment damaged in the flood, helping ensure the animals experienced minimal disruption through the recovery process.
Recovery following a disaster extends far beyond repairing damaged infrastructure. Supporting staff, communicating with stakeholders, securing critical resources, and maintaining continuity of animal care are all essential parts of the recovery process. By providing guidance, facilitating key partnerships, and helping organizations tell their story, ZDR3 enables facilities to remain focused on what matters most, their people, their animals, and the communities they serve.
New England Blizzard
A historic winter storm brought record snowfall to New England, resulting in widespread power outages, infrastructure damage, and significant snow loads. ZDR3 maintained contact with potentially impacted facilities throughout the event, and deployed a response team after a network facility requested support.
With timing a critical factor, the response team mobilized with a generator to ensure the welfare and safety of sensitive species. As power was restored, ZDR3 connected facility leadership with experienced peers in the region to help problem-solve recovery challenges and share lessons learned. Additional teams remained on standby should further on-scene support become necessary.
This response demonstrated the value of rapid coordination before, during, and after an incident. By combining immediate on-scene support and trusted peer-to-peer support throughout the recovery process, ZDR3 helped ensure the impacted facility had the resources and support needed.
Winter Storm Fern
Screenshot from Baron Weather’s proprietary forecast model showing predicted snow and freezing rain accumulation by Monday, 1/26/26. Red markers=ZDR3 Network facilities. Blue shading=snow accumulation. Pink shading=freezing rain accumulation. In some areas, heavy snow may also appear pink due to the way the model visualizes mixed or high-impact precipitation; pink does not automatically mean ice in those zone. This is intended as a supplemental situational awareness tool, not a standalone planning source.
Winter Storm Fern brought frigid temperatures, ice, and snow to regions more familiar with heatwaves than arctic blasts.
ZDR3 personnel conducted individual outreach to more than 100 network facilities in the path of Fern, allowing the team to identify emerging concerns and better understand where support might be needed as the storm unfolded. In parallel, leadership participated in coordination calls with emergency management partners, and ensured internal readiness should assistance be requested.
Many ZDR3 Network facilities around the country pledged teams and resources, including personnel, heavy equipment, and generators. Some teams were willing to travel across many states to get to impacted colleagues as road conditions would permit. These outpourings of support are critical to ZDR3’s ability to commit support to potentially impacted facilities.
Although no on-site deployments were required, ZDR3 had resources on standby for one facility experiencing power loss. We helped another facility identify how to contact their local emergency operations center (EOC), and connected them to potential recovery resources. For both facilities, ZDR3 served as a consistent point of contact, available to talk through plans, uncertainties, and next steps as the storm progressed.