When devastating wildfires tore through British Columbia’s Interior last August, RE/MAX real estate agent Meagan Bucar did not hesitate. Hooking a horse trailer to her truck, she drove directly toward the danger zones to help evacuate vulnerable animals.
However, what she encountered on the front lines surprised and troubled her. While there was no shortage of compassionate volunteers willing to step up and haul livestock to safety, coordination was entirely fractured. Nobody seemed to know where help was needed most, turning what should have been a streamlined rescue effort into a disorganized scramble.
During the intense Vernon wildfire, Bucar received more than a dozen urgent calls from animal owners pleading for assistance. Driving toward a property where horses were directly in the path of encroaching flames as the fire leaped across the highway, she arrived to find about five other trucks and trailers already on the scene. Working together, she and the other volunteers managed to lead a critical convoy back to Vernon just before authorities shut down the highway.
Reflecting on the chaos, Bucar noted that the fundamental roadblock wasn’t a lack of equipment or willingness.
“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.”
The severity of the logistical breakdown hit home later when another call came in from one of her clients. Roughly 30 animals needed to be evacuated from a property dangerously close to the area she had just left. Because the highway was already closed off, Bucar could not reach the location, nor could she connect with anyone else who was positioned to get in and help.
“It would have been really nice if all of us who were already in the area could have gone and helped,” she reflected.
That harrowing experience exposed a significant and dangerous gap in B.C.’s emergency livestock evacuation infrastructure. While volunteers, haulers, and trailers were readily available, vital information was scattered haphazardly across frantic phone calls, scattered Facebook posts, and unreliable word-of-mouth networks. Determined to bridge this dangerous communication divide, Bucar set out to build a digital tool that could bring all the moving pieces together.
‘We need an app’
The seed for what would become the Livestock Coordination Network (LCN)—a free platform designed to connect livestock owners with emergency assistance—began to take root just days after the Vernon fire, when another aggressive wildfire broke out near Summerland.
At the time, Bucar was roughly 90 minutes away. Alongside other eager volunteers, she rushed toward a property where 22 horses were facing immediate, life-threatening danger. Tragically, by the time their convoy reached nearby Peachland, the property had already burned. Pivoting quickly, they responded to another distress call, successfully helping to evacuate a group of valuable thoroughbreds as a wall of fire crested a nearby mountain.
Once the horses were safely loaded, however, a secondary crisis emerged: nobody knew where to take them.
Information regarding available boarding facilities and pastures was once again fragmented across Facebook groups and private phone calls. To complicate matters further, poor cellular reception in the mountainous terrain made accessing these digital breadcrumbs extraordinarily difficult. The closest safe haven they could finally confirm was located in Oliver, requiring an arduous 90-minute detour.
By the time Bucar finally returned to her home base in Vernon, the grueling rescue operation had spanned roughly six hours. Running on a mere two hours of sleep, she woke up with absolute clarity.
“I thought, ‘We need an app,’” she said.
Connecting livestock with the right help
Designed from the ground up to address the chaotic realities of rural emergencies, the resulting platform centers on four core user groups: livestock owners needing urgent evacuation, haulers equipped with trucks and trailers, boarding hosts offering temporary pastures or stalls, and emergency coordinators managing the broader disaster response.
When disaster strikes, a livestock owner can initiate an emergency protocol using a built-in SOS function. The system is engineered to instantly alert available haulers in the immediate vicinity, matching them intelligently based on the specific type of animal and the precise trailer required for transport.
Account access requires only a phone number and a text verification code. In a high-stress emergency situation, an owner can press a single SOS button, instantly notifying every qualified hauler nearby whose equipment matches the exact species needing evacuation. This automated matchmaking ensures, for instance, that a cattle-only hauler is never mistakenly pinged to transport a horse requiring a specialized trailer.
Furthermore, the technology is optimized to function over plain text messaging, ensuring it remains operational even in remote areas where cellular service is severely compromised or entirely knocked out by fires. The interface is intentionally streamlined so that it can be operated easily with one hand under extreme psychological pressure.
On the administrative side, the platform integrates official B.C. wildfire mapping data. This allows emergency coordinators to view incoming requests for help plotted directly alongside active evacuation alerts and orders.
Despite its robust capabilities, Bucar is quick to emphasize that LCN is not designed to replace established rescue organizations or official government emergency services.
“This is really a tool to complement it,” she explained.
Real estate roots in rural B.C.
The creation of the platform is deeply intertwined with Bucar’s professional background in the real estate industry.
A third-generation Realtor, Bucar grew up in Calgary within a family deeply connected to farming, real estate, and firefighting. After relocating to British Columbia roughly 12 years ago, she established a successful real estate career spanning approximately eight years. Based primarily in Vernon, her specialized work handling farms and acreages has closely connected her with rural communities throughout the B.C. Interior and into the Kootenays.
As a horse owner herself, local clients and animal rescue organizations already knew she possessed a heavy-duty trailer and stood ready to lend a hand whenever crises struck the region. Even so, she admits that the systemic vulnerability facing small hobby farms had previously escaped her notice.
“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 harrowing Summerland rescue mission, Bucar began drafting a basic prototype on her own. She then reached out to software developers she had previously met through a Kelowna mastermind group originally attended for her real estate business. Cory Silva of Sixth Summit quickly stepped forward to handle the complex software development work on a pro bono basis. Within days, Bucar had also consulted with the provincial Ministry of Agriculture, assembled a dedicated legal team, and finalized a fully functional prototype.
With development complete, Bucar confirmed that LCN is currently pending final approval on major app stores.
A free, province-wide network
Committed to accessibility during times of crisis, Bucar has personally funded the development of the platform out of her own pocket and intends to keep the service entirely free for all users.
“I don’t believe in emergencies you need to foot a bill, right?” she noted.
Looking forward, the network is being scaled for implementation across the entirety of British Columbia, rather than remaining isolated to the Okanagan region. Bucar outlines plans to engage with all 27 regional districts across the province, with the ultimate objective of establishing a single, unified coordination tool for rural animal safety. The initiative has already earned vital endorsements from the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association and Horse Council B.C.
Discussions are also underway regarding the possibility of expanding the framework to other provinces across Canada if the model proves successful in protecting rural livestock populations.
“If it helps save a life, I don’t think you can put a cost to that at the end of the day,” Bucar said.