Meagan Bucar/contributed

 

When wildfires tore through B.C.’s Interior in August, Remax agent Meagan Bucar didn’t hesitate to jump in her truck to help rescue horses at risk. 

What she saw surprised her: plenty of volunteers were willing to help evacuate livestock, but nobody seemed to know where that help was needed most.

During the Vernon wildfire, Bucar received more than a dozen calls from animal owners who needed help. She headed toward a property where horses were in danger as the fire crossed the highway. A horse owner herself, she had a trailer hooked up to her truck.

 

 

By the time she arrived, about five other trucks and trailers were already there. She ended up leading a convoy back to Vernon before the highway was shut down. 

“There’s lots of people who are willing to hook up a trailer they had sitting in their yard to go and help,” she said. “The issue is, they don’t know who needs help. They don’t know if they’re needed. They don’t know where to go.”

Then another call came in from one of her clients. Roughly 30 animals needed to be evacuated close to where she had just come from, but the highway had been shut down, and Bucar couldn’t reach anyone who could get there to help.

“It would have been really nice if all of us who were already in the area could have gone and helped,” she said.

The experience exposed what Bucar saw as a significant gap in livestock evacuations: volunteers and equipment were available, but information was scattered among phone calls, Facebook posts and word of mouth. This set her on a mission to created a tool intended to bring those pieces together.

 

‘We need an app’

 

Bucar is the founder of the Livestock Coordination Network (LCN), a free platform designed to connect livestock owners who need emergency assistance.

The idea crystallized when another wildfire broke out near Summerland days after the Vernon fire.

Bucar, about 90 minutes away, and other volunteers headed toward a property where 22 horses were in immediate danger, but by the time they reached Peachland, the property had burned. They responded to another call instead, helping evacuate thoroughbreds as fire crested a nearby mountain.

Once those horses were loaded, another problem emerged – where to take them.

Information about available boarding was spread across Facebook and phone calls, and Bucar says poor reception made accessing it difficult. The closest available location they knew about was in Oliver, requiring about 90 minutes of additional travel.

It ultimately took Bucar about six hours to get back to Vernon. After sleeping for roughly two hours, she woke up with an idea.

“I thought ‘We need an app,’” she said. 

 

Connecting livestock with the right help

 

LCN is built around four groups: livestock owners who need to evacuate animals, haulers with trucks and trailers, boarding hosts who can provide temporary pasture or stalls, and emergency coordinators overseeing the broader response.

In an emergency, an owner can use an SOS function to request help. The system is designed to alert available haulers nearby and match them according to the type of animal and trailer required.

Signing in requires a phone number and a text code. In an emergency, an owner presses one SOS button, and every available hauler nearby whose trailer suits that kind of animal is alerted immediately, matched automatically so a cattle-only hauler never gets pinged about a horse needing a specialized trailer.

It works over plain text too, so it still functions where cell service is thin, and it’s built to be simple enough to use one-handed, under pressure.

On the coordinator side, the system integrates B.C.’s wildfire map and can display requests for help alongside evacuation alert and order areas.

Bucar stresses that LCN isn’t intended to replace rescue organizations or emergency services.

“This is really a tool to complement it,” she said.

 

Real estate roots in rural B.C.

 

The idea also has close ties to Bucar’s real estate career.

A third-generation Realtor, Bucar grew up in Calgary in a family with ties to farming, real estate and firefighting. She moved to B.C. about 12 years ago and has worked in real estate for about eight years.

Based in Vernon, her work with farms and acreages has connected her with rural communities throughout the Interior and into the Kootenays. She also owns horses, and says clients and rescue organizations already knew she had a trailer and was willing to help when emergencies arose.

“I just don’t think I recognized the gap we were missing with all of these small hobby farms,” she said.

The morning after the Summerland rescue, Bucar began putting together a basic prototype herself. She then contacted software developers she had met through a Kelowna mastermind she originally attended for real estate.

Cory Silva of Sixth Summit offered to take on the development work pro bono, Bucar said. Within days, she had also met with the Ministry of Agriculture, assembled a legal team and had a working prototype.

Bucar said LCN pending approval on the app stores. 

 

A free, province-wide network

 

Bucar says she has funded LCN out of her own pocket and intends to keep it free.

“I don’t believe in emergencies you need to foot a bill, right?” she says. 

The network is being developed for use across B.C., rather than only in the Okanagan. Bucar says she plans to speak with all 27 regional districts about the platform, with the goal of creating one unified coordination tool for the province.

LCN has the support of B.C. Cattlemen’s Association and Horse Council B.C., she said.

There have also been discussions about eventually taking the concept elsewhere in Canada if it proves useful, she said.

“If it helps save a life, I don’t think you can put a cost to that at the end of the day.”