Does your family’s emergency plan include your animals? Planning and preparation are critical when it comes to protecting the health of your family, pets and livestock. Napa CART has lists of recommended items for your Pet and Home Emergency Kits.
Emergency Preparedness Checklists
Saving the Whole Family Booklet
1. Sign up for the NIXLE ALERTS advisory system. You will then get warnings of possible incidents in your area.
2. Review the NapaCART “Emergency Preparedness Checklists” and the AVMA “Saving the Whole Family Booklet” that includes detailed information on assembling emergency kits and plans for a wide variety of animal species.
Complete a “Pet Identification Sheet“ for each pet and attach a recent picture of you and them. Download the completed sheet and place it in a laminated sleeve. Pull the sheet out on a Red Flag Day and post in a visible spot near your pet food storage area. If you are unable to return to your pets, this sheet will provide a road map for care.
Note: the link will open the PDF in a new tab; you can download and print out the sheet or fill in the sheet online. If you fill in the sheet online be sure to save the PDF to your computer so that your information is saved.
3. Review the Checklists for your, your family and your animals. There is nothing mandatory about them, but they are the product of experiences from many wildfire incidents. Most first responders and NapaCART volunteers have a “Go Bag”. Do you?
4. Know in advance what you are going to do with your animals and yourself. Trying to figure it out during an emergency is wasting valuable time and often results in poor decisions.
5. Follow Napa CART Facebook page and website for current information and resources during a disaster.
DISASTER PREPAREDNESS FOR HORSE OWNERS
UC Davis Veterinary Medicine International Animal Welfare Training Institute provides a number of training opportunities and online resources at their website. Of particular note, see the UC Davis Center for Equine Health Horse Report regarding disaster preparedness for horse owners.
PG&E PUBLIC SAFETY POWER SHUTOFFS (PSPS)
When certain weather conditions are forecasted, PG&E may proactively shutoff power to certain areas to decrease fire risk. Depending on the duration of those weather conditions, and the process by which power gets restored, it may be several days before power is back on after a PSPS event. PG&E has a resource page dedicated to these Public Safety Power Shutoff outages.
WILDFIRE
Are you Ready for Wildfire? The Napa Communities FireWise Foundation created the comprehensive, yet easy-to-understand Defensible Space Planning and Preparation Guide to guide wildfire preparation around your home or farm.
FLOOD
UC Davis Veterinary Medicine and the Western Institute for Food Safety & Security provide flood preparedness, response and recovery information for:
Our thanks to Halter Sonoma for sharing this checklist on flood safety. Iowa State University provides Flood Safety recommendations for both pets and livestock.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Pet and Animal Emergency Planning
Does your family’s emergency plan include your animals? Planning and preparation are critical when it comes to protecting the health of your family, pets and livestock. Napa CART has lists of recommended items for your Pet and Home Emergency Kits. The AVMA provides free electronic downloads of their publication, Saving the Whole Family. This booklet includes detailed information on assembling emergency kits and plans for a wide variety of animal species.
Our own Napa County provides a website dedicated to emergency preparedness and directions for creating Disaster Planning and First Aid Kits for large and small animals.
UC Davis Veterinary Medicine International Animal Welfare Training Institute provides a number of training opportunities and online resources at their website. Of particular note, see the UC Davis Center for Equine Health Horse Report regarding disaster preparedness for horse owners.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Ready.gov website has an entire section devoted to emergency planning for your pets and animals.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention also provides helpful information on Disaster Preparedness for your pets.
Review the Napa CART Individual Disaster Preparedness Presentation for an outline of preparedness planning information.