Ready or Not: Evacuating an Animal Shelter During a Mock Emergency

ABSTRACT

The signing of the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Act into law will require states to include companion and service animals in their disaster response plans. Consequently, animal stakeholders across the United States are or will be involved in assessing their response capabilities as a part of developing or improving plans to evacuate and house animals. This paper reports on a mock disaster response exercise involving the evacuation of an urban animal shelter. A simulated emergency provided the opportunity to test the shelter's disaster evacuation capabilities and to illuminate issues that animal stakeholders should address when creating and refining emergency response plans. The participants successfully evacuated all animals from the building in good time, but the exercise highlighted two pitfalls. The first concerns the use of volunteers who have no training in disaster response but who nevertheless want to help. In situations involving animals, large numbers of well-meaning but untrained people will volunteer, and animal stakeholders should anticipate and manage their arrival. The second concerns the inevitable presence of the media and the need for a single point of contact for information about the incident.