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Community
& Office of Emergency Management Join Together to Develop Model City/State
Program
Nevada Disaster Plan
Includes
Families & Animals
Reno Gazette Journal
May 13, 1999
Animal lovers prepare relief plan for pets
By Barbara Anderson
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
Reprinted with permission
It took a flood for animal lovers in Washoe Valley, Carson City and Reno to decide the
time was right to create a relief plan for pets and livestock during times of natural
disaster.
Horses were swimming into barbed wire fences trying to escape flood waters in southwest
Reno in January 1997, said Dee Beaugez, publisher of the Horse Review, a Reno web site for
horse lovers.
Beaugez had her own lessons to learn from the flood. Her daughter's hunter-jumper
was trapped in an English barn in Pleasant Valley. "When the waters came, there was
no way to get into the barn or out of the barn," she said.
The horse was safe, "but we were very lucky," Beaugez said," A lot of
people did have horses who did get stuck in the water."
Details
What: Animal Disaster Preparedness Day
When: May 15
Purpose: To get message on disaster planning preparedness out to owners at: http://www.humanitarian.net local
information: http://www.horsereview.com
The experience made Beaugez and disaster relief officials realize there was no
organized method for rescuing and sheltering animals in times of floods, brush and wild
land fires or earthquakes.
She and a number of volunteers are writing an animal disaster preparedness plan for
Northern Nevada that would guide owners on how to evacuate animals and where they can be
taken for shelter.
"Whenever we have an emergency or disaster and people are asked or ordered to
evacuate their homes, the normal shelter that takes people won't take their animals,"
said Bob Minter, operations officer at the Nevada Division of Emergency Management.
The plan will include a list of volunteers who have been trained in animal evacuation,
he said. It also will list shelters that will accept cats, dogs, birds, horses,
etc., during a natural emergency.
Education is an important part of the plan. One mistake that horse owners make in
a fire is to turn their horses loose. "Initially they will run away, but they know
where they live and normally get fed every day is a safe place for them."
"They will run back into the fire and be killed," he said.
Owners also will place themselves in danger to save an animal, Beaugez said.
"With some training, we'll have a better chance of saving some animals --and some
people," she said.
The plan also would give animal owners details on what food and other supplies should
be gathered and kept in an animal disaster kit. "It may be 24, 48, or 72 hours
before emergency crews can get into where you are," Minter said. For
example, an animal that needs medication could be in jeopardy without the drugs being
available in a disaster kit.
"We'll be putting information out on what you need to have in your kit as a person
and what you need to have in a 72 hour disaster supply kit for an animal," he said.
The Northern Nevada animal disaster preparedness plan dovetails efforts to create a
national disaster plan that is being developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
Minter said.
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