Disaster Animal Response Team

“I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night.” - Marie Corelli

If ordered to evacuate your home, would you/could you leave your pets behind? Because most emergency shelters and hotels have a no pet policy, the standard procedure for disasters requires that pet owners leave their loved ones behind. However as Hurricane Katrina clearly showed, when given a choice between their own personal safety or abandoning their household pets, a significant number of people will choose to risk their lives in order to remain with their pets.

In recognition of this, congress passed the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act, Public Law 109–308 (2006). The PETS Act requires that State and local emergency preparedness authorities include how they will accommodate households with pets or service animals when presenting disaster preparedness plans to the FEMA. (A city or state is required to submit a plan in order to qualify for Federal Emergency Management Agency funding.)

Unfortunately, since the passage of the PETS Act of 2006, little has changed. Bureaucracies are slow to change. Under existing liability laws, a shelter could face a damaging lawsuit when someone is bitten by another person’s cute pet. And I suspect this law is not well known; I just learned of it, three years after its passage. It has never been mentioned in my training with the Red Cross or CERT.

Bottom Line

What can you do?

First- write to your mayor and governor and ask them, do they know about this law and what have they done to include pets in the emergency planning.

Second- follow the example of the Lamorinda area in Northern California (Lafayette, Moraga and Orinda in Contra Costa County). They have created a Disaster Animal Response Team (DART) to rescue pets and farm animals during Wildfires. Lamorinda DART consists of CERT graduates who have received additional animal sheltering and rescue training and are able to provide disaster response to humans and animals.