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Coping with natural disasters is an unfortunate personal reality for many families in our area. In the past six years, our community has dealt with 6 major wildfires, including the Buffalo Creek Fire in 1996, the High Meadow Fire in 2000 and the Snaking Fire, Black Mountain Fire and Schoonover Fire and the Haymen fire in 2002. The tireless work of fire fighters, supported by sheriff deputies, animal control and a host of volunteers managed to keep the loss of life and property no worse than it was (a total of over 60 homes, two human lives - as an aftermath to the Buffalo Creek Fire- dozens of animals and many thousands of acres of forest). As we reflect on this spring's fires, we realize that this summer could lead to even worse disasters. The lessons this community must learn from these experiences include:
 | Fire or other disaster will almost assuredly strike our community again. Disasters that could conceivably affect our community include fire, flash floods, earthquakes (the front range lies along a significant fault line), severe blizzards, severe lightning storms and a nuclear or biological crisis (human and animal diseases that can occur naturally or through bio-terrorism). In other parts of the country slow rising floods, costal floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis (tidal waves) can provide additional threats. |
| Individual Planning and Community Planning are the best methods by which we can seek to protect human lives, animals, homes, and businesses. Other resources take time to mobilize and will not aid in the first few hours of evacuation and initial containment, so local planning and local response is the most important factor in the initial stages of a natural disaster. |
| Animal lives are necessarily going to take second priority to human lives in an emergency situation, so the better prepared we are for all aspects of disaster management, both as individuals and as a community, the more likely we are to enable local emergency personnel to commit resources to saving animals. |
If you would like to help in disaster response planning and the actual disaster response to help save animals, please contact 303-838-2668 for further information, or click here for more details.
Intermountain Humane Society, a member of the Colorado Federation of Animal Welfare Agencies, would like to offer the following information to help provide animal owners in our community with information to help them prepare for the next fire or other disaster. In addition, we will provide links to other sites that provide information about individual and community planning concerning animals in natural disasters. This discussion is related in several parts, including Individual Planning, Neighborhood Planning, Community Planning and Disaster Preparedness Links.
Individual Planning
Individual planning is absolutely essential for families with pets and livestock. General principles of individual preparation include:
| You may not be near your home when disaster strikes. Once disaster strikes, you will probably not be able to enter the area personally to evacuate your pets and livestock. Only through planning and participation in neighborhood planning will you improve your chances that your pets and livestock will reach safety. |
| If you are at home when a disaster strikes, you should be prepared to take your animals with you when you leave. You will probably not be able to re-enter the area once you evacuate, so have an animal evacuation plan as well as the plan for the people in your family. Leaving animals not only endangers animals, but it temps people to try to return to their homes, risking their lives and the lives of emergency personnel. |
| Evacuated animals may be taken to holding areas by owners, neighbors or emergency personnel. In order to reunite animals with their families, animals must somehow be identifiable. Providing identification is absolutely a critical step in the disaster planning process. |
| During an evacuation, families may become separated. Every family should designate friends or relatives to serve as common telephone contacts for family members. At least one contact should be completely out the area, serving as a message center during a regional disaster. |
| Proper disaster planning will cost only a few dollars, even if elaborate. These costs are insignificant compared to the time savings in emergency situations and the savings in lives and emotional distress. |
| Prepare your own property to maximally withstand natural disasters. In our area, the most productive steps are cleaning out flammable slash and debris from your property, thinning trees where appropriate and removing trees and flammable items adjacent your home and outbuildings. Contact your local fire department or the U.S. Forest Service concerning their recommendations on wildfire prevention measures. |
The following list of disaster preparedness tips in compiled from many sources, including the Colorado Federation of Animal Welfare Agencies, the American Humane Association and the Humane Society of the United States. We have divided it into sections dealing with Pet Animals and Horses & Livestock.
Pet Animal Tips
| Make prior arrangements with friends or relatives to care for your animals should they need evacuation. Often community evacuation centers for people do not have facilities for large numbers of animals. This is especially critical for people with birds and exotic pets that may need special environmental conditions. These pets may also need to have special cages for transportation (with covers) and you may want to have hot-water bottles available to prevent chilling during cooler weather. |
| Compile a list of animal shelters and boarding kennels in your region where you might be able to seek emergency housing for animals in an emergency. |
| Post evacuation information clearly at your home concerning your pets. This emergency evacuation information should include the numbers of pets in the household, the location of evacuation supplies, signed permission for emergency crews to enter the premises to remove animals, local contact numbers and a contact out lives out of the area. Place this information in a durable sheet protector or real estate information box and place it where emergency crews or neighbors will see it and keep it with your animals. If you have pets with special medical needs, please place information about these needs in that packet. |
| Have portable carriers available for cats, small dogs and other small pets. Have leashes, collars/harnesses for larger dogs available. Place luggage tags on carriers or use permanent markers to place your name and phone number and an out of the area number on them. |
| Identify your pets! Have I.D. tags made for all pets to wear on their collars. Consider placement of permanent tattoos or microchips for pets to maximize their identification potential. Have pictures of your pets stored away from your home to aid in their identification. |
| Keep your pets current on vaccinations and keep copies of vaccination records available, in case you need to board your pets or leave the state with your animals. |
| If you evacuate your own animals, be sure to bring an pet first aid kit, including any prescription medications. In addition, if there is adequate time, bring food, water, veterinary records, dishes, a can opener, blankets, leashes, paper towels, toys and grooming utensils. Placing emergency equipment in a convenient location or making a list of needed items will be helpful, considering you may have only minutes to leave in an actual emergency. |
| Emergency Evacuation Notice Forms are downloadable
by clicking here (in
Adobe Acrobat .pdf format). If you don't already have Adobe Acrobat
Reader, you can download and install it for free from the Adobe Corporation
by clicking here.
 |
| Participate in neighborhood and community disaster preparedness planning programs! |
Tips for Horse and Livestock Owners
| Store photographs of horses and other individual livestock at a location away from your home. Keep duplicates of registration papers, brand inspection papers and other ownership records in a safe place away from your home. Horses at evacuation centers cannot legally be returned to their families without legal proof of ownership. Having copies of these papers available, especially if your home is lost, will be of great service during a very stressful time. |
| Create a list of friends who are willing to board your livestock during times of disaster. Have a list that includes people who are out of the area, since many local residents may be similarly threatened by the local or regional disaster. |
| Provide identification for horses and individual livestock. Keep special emergency halters available and visible with name tags or name plates attached to them. Permanent markers can also be used to mark halters with a telephone number. In emergency evacuation situations, markers can be used to write information on duct tape collars or information can be applied directly to the side of the animal, using spray paint. |
| Maintain an emergency evacuation packet in your livestock area where emergency crews will clearly see it. Heavy Sheet protectors and Real Estate Information Boxes are valuable in protecting and displaying this information. Provide the numbers and description of each horse as well as any pertinent information regarding transportation, care, medications and special housing needs (such as penning a stallion separately). |
| If at all possible, have adequate trailer space for transporting all of your livestock. Make sure that all of your horses are easily loaded into trailers. If necessary, seek professional help in teaching horses to load quickly and safely into horse trailers. Failure to train horses to load into trailers risks the lives of horses, owners and emergency crews. See our Internet Disaster Resource area for information about trailer training programs for horses. If you have cattle or other livestock, make sure facilities exist for loading them into trailers. Should emergency crews need to use your trailer to move your animals, it is essential that a hitch ball be available that fits that trailer. Keep a matching ball hitch available and visible for each trailer. |
| Maintain current vaccination status for horses, in case they have to be housed in emergency facilities. If you might evacuate your horses to an out of state location, having a current EIA test (Coggins test for Equine Infectious Anemia) may expedite getting a health certificate for interstate travel. |
| We know of lightning storms that have killed over 5 horses in one evening, with multiple horses under one tree. One lightning storm on Mt. Rosalie killed over 50 elk! If you have lots of trees in a coral or pasture, please put up some sort of wooden shelter building for your livestock. If you have a single tree where horses congregate during storms, fence it off to prevent lightning related deaths. |
| Severe blizzard conditions are always a potential hazard in Colorado and many other areas. We can get storms in excess of three feet with blowing and drifting of snow. Under these circumstances, you may be without power, without water from your well and unable to drive anywhere for feed. Always have at least 10-14 days of feed available for your horses in the winter. Take steps to create an indoor water storage system and consider a wood stove or large camping stove to help melt snow to water horses. Remember, each horse may need up to 10 gallons of water per day. Keep horse blankets and an equine first aid kit available for horses. |
| Participate in neighborhood and local disaster planning programs. If possible, work with neighbors to create cooperation that will help ensure the safe evacuation of each other's pets and livestock during a crisis. See information in these articles on neighborhood and local disaster planning efforts. |
Links to Neighborhood and Community Disaster Planning
This information is available in a downloadable brochure Keeping Animal Safe in Disaster Situations, in Adobe Acrobat format: Click here to download
Last Update April 10, 2004