Farm animals and companion animals are often overlooked in emergency and disaster response planning, resulting in preventable suffering and death during floods, fires, and other events.
Disasters disproportionately harm animals who cannot self-evacuate and whose owners face impossible choices under emergency conditions. Farm animals on flooded or fire-threatened properties face prolonged suffering if evacuation is not planned in advance. Companion animal welfare is inseparable from human welfare in emergencies: people who refuse to evacuate because they cannot take pets put themselves and rescue workers at additional risk. Emergency planning that explicitly incorporates animals — identifying resources, training responders, and creating systems for animal evacuation and temporary housing — saves both human and animal lives. Post-disaster animal welfare assessment should be integrated into recovery frameworks rather than treated as secondary to human needs.