Natural disasters, fires, and floods affect millions of animals annually. Welfare-conscious disaster preparedness and response prevents enormous preventable suffering for companion animals, livestock, and wildlife.
Animals are profoundly vulnerable during disasters precisely because their survival depends on humans who may be evacuating themselves. Animals left behind during evacuations face days or weeks of fear, starvation, dehydration, and physical hazard. The welfare harm from Hurricane Katrina - where lack of planning led to hundreds of thousands of companion animals being abandoned - was a turning point that drove significant policy change. The lesson is that animal welfare in disasters requires planning before the disaster occurs: evacuation plans that include animals, pre-registration and microchipping, community welfare networks, and trained animal rescue capacity. Animals cannot prepare for disasters - the humans responsible for them must.