Glynn County Animal Services Advisory Board chairman Mimi Curran presents Glynn County Fire Chief Al Thomas with 25 pet oxygen masks. The donated masks will be carried on the fire trucks to be used if a family pet is involved in a house fire. (Bobby Haven / The Brunswick News)

Firefighters in Glynn County will have a new resource to help pets rescued from burning buildings, thanks to donations from around the county.

The Glynn County Animal Services Advisory Board is donating 75 pet-size oxygen masks to the fire department. Each of the county’s 25 trucks will have a kit of three sizes of masks to fit different sizes of animals.

Glynn County Fire Chief Al Thomas said firefighters have had to improvised to make oxygen masks for pets, using cups and oxygen tubing.

“This will give us something we can hook up and utilize more effectively,” Thomas said. “If we’re able to use them and help save a pet, of course that will be something the pet owner will be most appreciative of.”

The masks will be presented to the fire department tonight, at the Glynn County Commission meeting at 6 p.m. at the historic county courthouse, 701 G St.

Thomas said the fire department always tries to protect both people and animals during fires, but said trucks have never carried equipment designed for animals.

“This is a tool we can use for a pet that’s got smoke inhalation,” Thomas said.

The idea made perfect sense to Mimi Curran, president of the animal services advisory board. She read about the pet-size oxygen masks in a newspaper and brought the idea to the board, which voted to buy masks for the department.

“We didn’t realize there was such a thing,” Curran said. “This is a special project we feel is beneficial to the community.”

The animal advisory board manages donations that come in, which are mainly used to pay for spaying and neutering animals that are adopted from the county’s animal shelter. But once in a while, it will pay for a bigger project that goes to help animals all over the county.

In this case, more than half of the $2,100 spent on the masks came from proceeds raised by The Brunswick News’s pet calendar, Curran said.

“I want people to know it’s being put back in the community,” Curran said.

“What goes around comes around and it helps everybody out.”