Pets need protection from storms, too

• By SONYA KIMBRELL
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jun 1, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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If it’s not safe for you to hang around, it’s not safe for your pet.

That’s the message animal welfare organizations in Louisiana  are trying to send to pet owners as hurricane season approaches.

“It may not be the most sexy or exciting topic when you’re discussing evacuation, (but) the most important issue is getting people to evacuate their pets,” said Heather Rigney, disaster preparedness coordinator for the New Orleans chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Media images post-Hurricane Katrina of people refusing to leave their pets and stories about owners searching for animals they left behind sparked the passage of a state law in 2006.

The law requires each parish to include provisions for household pets in any emergency-operation plan.

That includes training volunteers and identifying pet-friendly evacuation shelters. The law also requires any business or nonprofit organization that normally houses household pets or that services animals to file an evacuation plan with the Department of Agriculture and Forestry. That state agency oversees the Louisiana State Animal Response Team.

Many veterinarians and animal-welfare workers backed the law because it organizes the rescue effort and recognizes that many people consider their pets members of their families.

Dr. Becky Adcock, a veterinarian volunteer with the animal-response team, has said many groups participated in rescuing household pets after Katrina, but there was little coordination. It was hit or miss whether someone stranded with animals was allowed on a rescue boat with their pets, she said.

Local animal-control organizations are the first line of defense in an emergency.

Horses and other farm animals are not included in the Louisiana law, but the Louisiana State Animal Response Team includes evacuation information and resources.

Rigney encouraged pet owners to evacuate early.

“Make sure your pets are going to be welcome wherever you’re planning to go,” she said.

Though there will be pet-friendly shelters throughout Louisiana, people and animals won’t be allowed in the same shelter, with the exception of seeing-eye dogs and other such animals.