Natural disasters cause enormous animal suffering, and integrating animal welfare into emergency management prevents both animal deaths and human-animal bond disruption.
Animals caught in natural disasters face drowning, starvation, injury, and separation from owners without the ability to understand or respond to emergency instructions. The scale of animal suffering in major disasters can be enormous. Disaster preparedness that includes animals — microchipping pets, including animals in evacuation plans, pre-positioning rescue resources, and training emergency responders in large animal rescue — dramatically reduces this suffering while also improving human welfare by enabling more complete evacuation.