Pets and Hurricanes/Cyclones

[Cyclone Runner]

Watching the coverage from Australia was brilliant. Storm 2K is a great resource. But one thing bothered me. They always kept saying no pets in the shelters. But then they never said what to do with your pet.

No sane pet owner is going to leave Fluffy in the house to ride out the storm while they evacuate. Afterall most pets are family as much as kin.

In Australia, there are both pet and non-pet shelters. In the Outback you could probably get your prize bull in the high school gym with a bit of haggling.

Perhaps many elderly people refuse to leave because there is no place for their cat or dog and that's all the family they have!

What do Americans do with their pets?

Kevin Vang
APCEDI Coordinator

http://www.afap.org/apcedi
http://www.afap.org/
http://www.birdquest.net/

[opera ghost]

I have an evacuation plan that specifically involves going to live with family who can take in Sebastian (my darling Siamese) until it's safe to go home again with him. Many of my friends and family have similar evacuation plans. (Some head to Dallas... some head to San Antonio, some head to Austin)

I would NEVER go to a shelter if it invoved leaving Sebastian behind.

Many hotels relax thier "no pets" policies when hurricanes threaten and many families got to stay with relitives- or at worst ride out the storm.

And there are the people who see pets as replaceable or consider the plans too much of a hassle to deal with and leave them behind.... And they'd probably leave them behind shelter or not.

[Lindaloo]

All hotels and motels accept pets in emergency situations.

[KBBOCA]

The original point is valid however... some people DO stay because of their pets. Look at the folks in Sanibel who stayed with their pets (see the irresponsible journalism thread). Pet shelters & non-pet shelters would be a GREAT idea.

[opera ghost]

Birds are difficult to move according to a friend of mine with a parrot. It's supposedly easier on them to manage the stress of the storm than to be hauled around to shelters and the like- they have very sensitive immune systems (this is ALL second hand information)

There are always going to be people who choose to stay behind for people or animals- regardless of the options available.

I see several issues with Pet shelters

Some people are allergic to animals
Scared animals attack more often


Also Shelters are never going to be able to hold all the people that need to leave a storm. Saying no pets, no smoking, no (insert choice) it's made very clear that people with (choice) should make other arrangements.

Say I had Sebastian and counted on being able to hit a shelter- but the pet shelter was full. OR say I'm allergic to dogs and the no-pet shelters are full. At that point you have people being turned away from shelters when there are slots open down the street.

It's stressed in every storm I've ever seen or been through that pets aren't allowed in shelters. It's not something they pop on you unexpectedly- people with pets KNOW that they're going to have to find other options and don't waste time trying to get to a shelter.

Some people stay behind- but there's not much you can do. Those people would stay behind if the shelters were open to pets- because the hotels are open to pets! They have other options- but they prefer to stay at home and wait it out.

[themusk]

Birds are difficult to move according to a friend of mine with a parrot. It's supposedly easier on them to manage the stress of the storm than to be hauled around to shelters and the like- they have very sensitive immune systems (this is ALL second hand information)

It's also false information. Birds normally move around in their native habitat all the time, often to avoid hazards, and they are perfectly happy to travel pretty much anywhere at anytime for any reason as long as its with their human "flock". Also, birds are not especially fragile (that's a common misconception) -- after all, the outdoor ones live a hard life, in hazardous, filthy, drafty surroundings, eating contaminated food and drinking contaminated water, and if birds were as fragile as people often imagine they are, why aren't they dropping out of the sky, dead?

The misconceptions your friend has do have some basis in fact: birds, as prey animals, hide their illnesses until they're all but dead. An ill bird will look healthy to all but the most discerning eyes for weeks or months or even years, until its final few hours. A lot of people mistakenly conclude that their bird died "suddenly", and then further misattribute its death to a "draft", or "being scared by the cat", or something else trivial that they observed just before death. More substantially, this trait of birds does make exposure to other birds (who may be undetectably ill with life-threatening communicable diseases), as might occur in a shelter, a real risk.

There are always going to be people who choose to stay behind for people or animals- regardless of the options available.

Actually the problem of pets and shelters is a very serious matter that has a documented impact on whether or not people evacuate. It's currently being discussed among emergency management professionals in the US, with an ever-increasing number of professionals favoring some sort of organized public pet sheltering.

The same is often true for persons who stay behind with special-needs relatives, though that problem is becoming rarer thanks to better emergency planning for special needs persons.

I see several issues with Pet shelters

Some people are allergic to animals
Scared animals attack more often

Both of these can be dealt with easily enough. Set aside some shelters as pet-friendly, leave others as people-only (in some places, pet-friendly shelters are already in operation), and insist that pets be appropriately restrained or confined while at a shelter.

Also Shelters are never going to be able to hold all the people that need to leave a storm. Saying no pets, no smoking, no (insert choice) it's made very clear that people with (choice) should make other arrangements.

That's half the problem. Yes, a reason we don't have pet-friendly shelters widely available is, to a degree, because emergency services are underfunded. However, shelter occupants are usually persons who lack financial, transportation, or other means to make other, infinitely more desireable, arrangements (tell me, if you had a choice between spending a night or more sleeping on a gymnasium floor with a whole lot of strangers, or sleeping at a relative's house or in a comfortable motel bed with your loved ones, which would you choose?). For persons without other options who own pets, the choice becomes abandonment of the pet or evacuation. The majority of pet owners, offered those two options, choose to stay with their animal. And there is increasing evidence that it is precisely those pet owners who make up a majority of casualties in evacuation areas.

So yes, saying "no pets" is a kind of triage -- but not an acceptable one.

Say I had Sebastian and counted on being able to hit a shelter- but the pet shelter was full. OR say I'm allergic to dogs and the no-pet shelters are full. At that point you have people being turned away from shelters when there are slots open down the street.

How is such a hypothetical for a few people any worse than being automatically turned away in every instance for every person with a pet whose only option is a shelter?

An estimate of the number of domestic animals is supposed be a part of every locality's Emergency Operation Plan. Good planning could minimize, and even eliminate, the number of instances of the sort you describe. It would certainly lose fewer lives than the current policy does.

It's stressed in every storm I've ever seen or been through that pets aren't allowed in shelters. It's not something they pop on you unexpectedly- people with pets KNOW that they're going to have to find other options and don't waste time trying to get to a shelter.

That's right -- they, currently, stay in place in overwhelming numbers, and, disproportionately, die.

Some people stay behind- but there's not much you can do. Those people would stay behind if the shelters were open to pets- because the hotels are open to pets! They have other options- but they prefer to stay at home and wait it out.

Untrue. A great many people cannot afford a hotel or motel room. A great many people lack personal transportation to a motel room. A great many persons have responsibilities or special needs that restrict their options for evacuation. The list goes on. This is, after all, why we have shelters in the first place. If persons who truly need shelters didn't exist, we wouldn't have a shelter system -- we'd just tell everyone to bunk with relatives or go get a hotel room. I, myself, as a non-driving, wheelchair-using recipient of a meager disability check, am a prime example of the kind of person whose only option during an evacuation is a shelter.

Everything I've read on the matter indicates that when pet owners have options other than abandoning their pets, they evacuate. Pet owners don't have some unconscious death wish over and above the remainder of the population -- they merely have a commitment to an animal.

I expect to see the no-pets-in-any-shelters policy to be widely abandoned over the next few years. The evidence is in place that this policy is counterproductive, and emergency program managers are increasingly looking for solutions (unfortunately the solutions will, most likely, have to be carved out locally without the cooperation of the Red Cross, which on this issue hasn't been helpful).

[Lindaloo]

EXCELLENT post musk!!

[Cyclone Runner]

Very Insightful and Informative

Thanks

[opera ghost]

themusk, I'll bring this argument back over here since it's clearly where both of us have our larger argument.

Point by point.

1: Birds. Second hand informaiton (stated clearly) I was just repeating what I had heard. I'll be sure to pass along your more informed thoughts to my friend with birds. All good.

2: I still say- there will always be people, even if there are pet friendly shelters, who will stay behind for thier pets. They'll be uninformed, overconfident, or worried about being aroudn a lot of other animals. There are dozens of reasons people choose to trot out about why they stay behind with thier pets. These people, not a majority, won't be saved by pet shelters. Pets will be an excuse for some even when we've done everything possible to remove thier excuses.

3: Issues- These are still serious issues that will need to be dealt with and don't have easy solutions. Which leads to

4: In which you and I agree.... however have different solutions. People need to be educated about options when you have pets, and at the same time, reminded that to stay behind with a pet is tantamount to suicide for both the person and the pet. It's foolish on the part of the emergency operatiosn to just say- No Pets in Shelters! without, at the same time, telling people options if they DO have pets. Mention that most hotels accept pets in an evacuation- that knowledge is *not* as common place as one would think. I try to keep very informed on this sort of thing and I had never heard that until someone mentioned it for Charley. I assumed (incorrectly) that my ONLY choice was to take Sebastian and make a run for relitives.

I agree this form of triage is unacceptable- however it is, at least, well known. Given that or other options- most people know of the no pets policy and can plan around it. It's a simple distinction. I'd LOVE to see pet friendly shelters but it's going to take time and money- and emergency services are inevitably underfunded.

5: Again, we agree- but differ in view. I accept that it's going to be a long difficult rule to change and am working from the current view of things. You are more optimistic and look towards the possibilities. Pet/No Pet shelters aren't going to change this year- and probably not in the next year either. There are going to be issues trying to change the system- and issues are the one thing that an emergency doesn't need. Trying to implement such a plan without a great deal or work, consideration, and lobbying to both officials and to people who don't have pets is going to be difficult. Many many people don't understand that Sebastian is to me what thier children are to them. They say- leave behind the pet... pets are replaceable.. humans aren't. I say- Sebastian is as close to a son as I have. He is my companion, my furry little valium pill, my best friend, and one of the best things that's ever happened to me. I tell that to my petless friends and they can't even comprehend it. Can you imagine the difficulty of explaining to a petless public that pets may take away some of thier shelter space? That pet friendly shelters might make thier search for shelter more difficult? It's not going to be an easy path in this society of disposable pets. You don't think pets are disposableto these people? Volunteer for the SPCA.

6: That's why we need people getting alternative options out to the public! Now! That's one thing we can do for these people until we can get pets into shelters- is offer them hope. Tell them that hotels and motels will accept thier pets with them... offer them ideas of how to plan around having pets.

7: I don't think you and I can agree. The cost of a hotel or motel? It's pennies next to one life. The cost of begging a ride out of town? Of asking a neighbor for help evacuating? It's PRIDE. It's pride that kill these people. Fixed income? Having no money is better than having no life. The thought of having to seek charity if they don't have any money left- that's pride. The horror of having to ask for help from friends and neighbors? That's PRIDE. Do you honestly think that anyone is going to let a little old lady and her darling pekenese die on the doorstep of a hotel because she doens't have the money for a room?

There are always options. It's pride that bars these people from getting the shelter they need. Pride and misinformation. I can respect someone with pride- but I reserve the right to call them ~fools~ if they die when salvation was at thier fingertips and they turned it away for the sake of pride.

Now on the post from the other thread-
I wrote: People shouldn't need to go to shelters at ALL- there should always be another option in case the shelters are full or you can't get to them.

You wrote: Actually, public policy is exactly the opposite -- shelters are a place of last resort. They're where you go when you have no other options left to try.



We were agreeing there. Complety agreeing. Shelters should be a place of last resort. People should plan out evacuations long before hand. there shouldalways be another option if you've planned well in advance. I think we agree a lot more than you realized. I'm a pessimist- you're an optimist and some of our methods differ... but for the most part we agree.

[opera ghost]

And as a side note

Humanity, as a whole is a shelfish and unyielding beast that crushes individuals.

Individuals are usually compassionate. In situations such as this- hurricanes and natural disasters- people are given aid through organizations such as Red Cross and it's like. All you have to do is ask and give your story- they will help you find a new home, they'll give you food if you have none.. they'll reach out and offer hope and shelter. Help is there for the asking in situations such as these. The people of Florida have not been forsaken. The people who have lost everything still have food to eat... they will recieve donations of clothing- people will help them stand back up on thier own two feet.

But first... you have to ask.

[themusk]

1: Birds. Second hand informaiton (stated clearly) I was just repeating what I had heard. I'll be sure to pass along your more informed thoughts to my friend with birds. All good.

Yup, not your mistaken ideas, and really, not even your friend's mistaken ideas -- those are popular misconceptions fueled by pet birds' bad habit of dropping dead for no apparent good reason. But I'm owned and operated by a parrot who keeps me well informed (actually, the society dedicated to his parrot species, and his veterinarian, do that).

2: I still say- there will always be people, even if there are pet friendly shelters, who will stay behind for thier pets. <snip>

I agree that there will always be people who stay behind, because for whatever reason emergency services can't motivate them to leave. But that's a separate issue from the substantial, well-documented problem of intelligent, reasonable people putting themselves in harm's way because there haven't been any provisions made for their pets.

People need to be educated about options when you have pets, and at the same time, reminded that to stay behind with a pet is tantamount to suicide for both the person and the pet.

Actually, it's not, people know this, and to say that it's suicidal only ruins the credibility of an evacuation message. Most people who ignore an evacuation order live to see another day, and everyone knows this to be true. Storms veer away or weaken or pass just to the edge of an area, survivors manage to find a safe spot amidst the debris of a collapsing building, or float on a few boards to safety, etc.

What staying behind is is a gamble. Pet owners who stay behind are making, consciously or unconsciously, a cost/benefit analysis and deciding that the risk of severe injury or death (sizable, but nonetheless significantly less than 100%) isn't great enough to justify abandoning their animal to try to cope with a dangerous and terrifying situation alone. And people will continue to stay behind until the cost rises to intolerable levels (not anything we mortals control, or should invoke even if we could), or the benefits are reduced. And the obvious way to undercut the benefit of staying at home is to help the pet owner to evacuate and house his or her pet

It's foolish on the part of the emergency operatiosn to just say- No Pets in Shelters! without, at the same time, telling people options if they DO have pets. Mention that most hotels accept pets in an evacuation- that knowledge is *not* as common place as one would think. I try to keep very informed on this sort of thing and I had never heard that until someone mentioned it for Charley. I assumed (incorrectly) that my ONLY choice was to take Sebastian and make a run for relitives.

This information is out there, already. I seem to remember that both FEMA and the Red Cross distribute disaster planning for animals pamphlets (I may be wrong on this, as my memory of who puts what out is fuzzy). Many vets make such information available, too.

But information alone isn't enough when the resources required to meet the need don't exist. Over 60% of households in America have pets. Extrapolating, that's 60% of all evacuating households. It's not hard to imagine evacuation scenarios where there simply aren't enough places for both pets and people even if there were no other barriers to staying in hotel rooms or boarding animals with vets.

I agree this form of triage is unacceptable- however it is, at least, well known. Given that or other options- most people know of the no pets policy and can plan around it.

I'm not sure most people are planning around it successfully. Pet owners make up the vast majority of the stay-behinders, and abandoned animals wandering at large is a serious post-disaster hazard. Neither approach constitutes successful planning, and I'm far from certain that, added together, we're not looking at what happens to a majority of pets and owners during a disaster. I can't find the numbers that would let me crunch out a definitive answer to this, but the numbers I can find hint at this..

It's a simple distinction. I'd LOVE to see pet friendly shelters but it's going to take time and money- and emergency services are inevitably underfunded.

You forget that nonprofits other than the Red Cross can step in to operate pet-friendly shelters, and that's what is, in fact, beginning to occur. And I wouldn't be surprised to find that some municipalities are themselves opening pet-friendly shelters, because most voters own pets.

You are more optimistic and look towards the possibilities. Pet/No Pet shelters aren't going to change this year

in many places, it has changed, this year.

- and probably not in the next year either. There are going to be issues trying to change the system- and issues are the one thing that an emergency doesn't need. Trying to implement such a plan without a great deal or work, consideration, and lobbying to both officials and to people who don't have pets is going to be difficult.

No I'm not more optimistic, but I may be better informed about the issue. That pet owners make up a majority of the stay-behinders (and in the case of incidents where hazardous areas are cordoned off for a time, make up a majority of those who sneak back into the cordoned off areas), is widely known. It is accepted in principle by nearly everyone that this matter of pet care must be addressed -- this is long past the point of being controversial.

The Red Cross is unwilling to open the shelters they operate to pets (at least last I heard -- you're talking to a retiree here, not an active emergency manager). But in many areas local nonprofits have stepped forward to operate pet-and-people shelters or pet-only emergency boarding. Increasingly, emergency managers around the country seek out likely organizations to do this for their area. This change is happening, right now. The biggest obstacles are lack of experience operating shelters on the part of the local nonprofits, and the difficulty of doing this piecemeal, locality by locality, without the advantages that come with working with a national umbrella organization like the Red Cross. Personally, I think the Red Cross will hop onboard once pet-friendly shelters reach a critical mass, and then one more obstacle to saving human lives will be fully overcome.

7: I don't think you and I can agree. The cost of a hotel or motel? It's pennies next to one life.

Pennies many people do not have at all. even if their lives depend upon it. In fact poor people in America are often at risk of losing their lives because they don't have those "pennies" -- I can think of the constantly wheezing aide I had who had severe asthma but no money for the medication to treat it (untreated asthma is a killer).

I don't think you understand the extent of real poverty in America. In the last two weeks I've twice loaned a few dollars to two different attendants of mine (I'm disabled and have daily attendant care) who had absolutely nothing to their names, not even gas or bus money, even though they work over 40 hours a week. My aides are, unfortunately, paid McDonald's wages to do their jobs by my insurance, and, even more unfortunately, they're not the only folks in this country trying to support a family on a McPaycheck.

People who earn very little usually know others who earn very little, too. How many friends do you have who make much more or much less than you do? Hardly any, right? And those you do have are more distant friends, right? People hang out with their own kind, and, especially, people don't like to associate with those below them on the economic ladder. I wouldn't have been able to lend her motel money today (I didn't have it), and, importantly, neither would any of her fellow bottom-of-the-economic-ladder friends.

The cost of begging a ride out of town?

That assumes you actually know someone to beg (it's common for elderly, disabled, and chronically ill people to become socially isolated -- that means they have nofriends, no family and know no neighbors). That assumes you know someone who will, in the face of an imminent danger to his or her life and the lives of their family as well as yours, will go out of their way to take you and your pet to the nearest available hotel room -- which may be halfway across the state. Or that the ride you need to beg doesn't need to be in a wheelchair lift equipped van.

Or that your boss lets you out of work early enough to make that trek to find a hotel room with your pet (before you say such persons should quit their jobs and evacuate early, remember that its the workers performing essential tasks who are not only going to be the last to be released to take shelter, people who work at those often lifesaving jobs generally fully understand that they need to stay at their posts, and not quit, so that people like you might live.

We live in a much more complicated world than you want to believe exists out there. I have no doubt that you can easily hop in your car with your dog and check into a motel somewhere, that you have friends and family you could borrow money from if need be, and so forth, and that's exactly what you should do, if you're asked to evacuate. But it's a fallacy to assume that everyone else in the community has exactly the same resources that you do.

Of asking a neighbor for help evacuating? It's PRIDE. It's pride that kill these people. Fixed income? Having no money is better than having no life.

No, it is not that kind of either/or for poor people. The equation is more like since you have no money, you're life is at risk.

Being poor is not, as you seem to think it is, the same as being broke. Being poor means most of the time having an empty bank account and a very nearly empty wallet. It means frequently going hungry and rarely obtaining medical care, even when you have urgent medical needs. It often means bouncing between cheap rental and homeless shelter. It means feeling like you're rich when you have a ten or a twenty in your pocket. It means having no one around who could loan you a hundred or so if they would, and no one who would loan you the money when they could.

Do you understand how poor poor really is?

And yes, poor people can and do have pets. Animal food can be really cheap (back when I had a cat I could have fed her, had I wanted to, on about $5.00/mo), dogs can come in handy when living in unsafe areas, and in any case animals can miss a few meals with the rest of the family, too.

The thought of having to seek charity if they don't have any money left- that's pride. The horror of having to ask for help from friends and neighbors? That's PRIDE. Do you honestly think that anyone is going to let a little old lady and her darling pekenese die on the doorstep of a hotel because she doens't have the money for a room?

I'm, in fact, very sure such a person could be left to die. Little old ladies are left to fend for themselves, and to die, all the time.

A number of years ago I had a job that put me right across the street from a homeless shelter. Every morning, at shelter closing time, I was able to look out my window and watch the shelter toss a very old woman who was barely able to walk even with her walker, out the door, into the snow and cold, to spend her day till the shelter opened again at night. Shelter staff would stand there to make sure this poor woman left the property since shelter rules prohibited residents from loitering in front of the building during daylight hours. After they made sure this likely "loiterer" had inched her way past the shelter property, staff would go back in, and abandon the woman to the streets, whether it was sun, rain, sleet, hail, ice, or snow.

While most of us who are not poor expect rules to be occasionally bent to accomodate us, for the poor, rules are rules, and they're enforced to the letter, no matter how draconian. No pay, no stay-- that's the rule. Most of us who are better off (even those of us who are only marginally better off) don't want to be around poorly dressed, perhaps unkept, people, and, trust me, hotel management would not hesitate to throw a "bag lady"-type and her "mutt" out into the wind.

There are always options. It's pride that bars these people from getting the shelter they need. Pride and misinformation. I can respect someone with pride- but I reserve the right to call them ~fools~ if they die when salvation was at thier fingertips and they turned it away for the sake of pride.

Pride is not a problem for most poor people. It may be a problem for the newly poor, but most poor have whatever pride, as well as whatever sense they might have had of self-worth, quickly beaten out of them.

Everything you've written tells me you're completely isolated from the reality of poverty. I just don't know what to tell someone so isolated as you, except to say that the world you live in is not as you imagine it to be.

Now on the post from the other thread-
I wrote: People shouldn't need to go to shelters at ALL- there should always be another option in case the shelters are full or you can't get to them.

You wrote: Actually, public policy is exactly the opposite -- shelters are a place of last resort. They're where you go when you have no other options left to try.

We were agreeing there. Complety agreeing. Shelters should be a place of last resort. People should plan out evacuations long before hand. there should always be another option if you've planned well in advance.

And in fact we disagree on that: for a great many people, shelters are their only option, no matter how long and hard they plan. And even the finest plans fail unexpectedly.

I think we agree a lot more than you realized. I'm a pessimist- you're an optimist and some of our methods differ... but for the most part we agree.

It's not often that I'm called an optimist. I'm used to looking at the dark side of things (I've even got personal plans for where to shelter in case of a major tornado, and the area I live in hasn't seen anything worse than an F2 in all of recorded history ) I habitually analyze ideas with the thought "and, when that doesn't work, what do we do next?" I assume that people are usually bigoted and mostly irrational, though I also give us credit for a kind of crypto-rationality (such as that cost/benefit analysis weighing staying against abandoning one's pet I mentioned above) that, when understood, can be harnessed for our own good. I don't think diddlysquat about abstractions and firmly believe that when it comes to saving lives, anything goes.

Where I think we differ is that I see the people of a community as having much broader and deeper differences in circumstances, resources, experiences, etc., than you do. Also I don't concern myself with judging the merit of any of those differences when it comes to saving lives. I don't care if painting myself purple and running around naked is what it takes to get some cult of kooks to evacuate -- hand me the paintbrush, and we can discuss whether or not I should have done it or whether they deserved having me do it for them after the hazard has passed. If anything, I'd consider myself a crass pragmatist.

You, to me, seem to think that all persons have similar resources to yourself. You put a high value on whether an approach to saving lives possesses some sort of intrinsic rightness. You think that some persons forfeit their right to be protected by deviating from what you see as the correct use of those universally available resources. To my eyes, this is limited, rigid, and overburdened with philosophical abstractions entirely inappropriate in matters of survival.