How often are your family and pets all in the same place on a given day? Your child is at school, you and your spouse are at work, your dog is at home, and your cat is somewhere off in the backyard. In the event of an emergency, what’s the plan?
- Here are some helpful tips and actions to plan for an emergency.
- Evacuation Plans are useful during the time of emergency or disaster in order to ensure that residents are safe and away from the dangerous region.
- This Ready! Set! Go! Evacuation Plan and this plan provided by the Los Angeles Fire Department provides evacuation plans to keep you, your family, and your home safe in the event of a wildfire.
- Here is additional information on preparing for evacuation in the event of a fire.
Pet Emergency Plans
Your pets are a part of the family and so it is important that you are responsible and take care to ensure their safety as well.
The Pasadena Humane Society (PHS) Disaster Planning for Pets is designed to help you keep your pets at home safe in the case of an emergency. They suggest that you pay attention to warnings, hazard notifications, and evacuation notices in order to get to your pet if necessary. PHS also emphasizes the need, in your pets’ safety kit, that it not only includes food, water, etc, but also your pets’ license(s), its crate or pet-safe carrier, a photo of your pet in case it gets lost, and a list of feeding and care instructions in case you need to board your pets.
EMA also emphasizes your need to Include your Pets’ Needs in your Disaster Plan.
You may build an emergency kit that provides the food, water, and other needs for your pets’ survival, identify locations you can keep your pet away from disaster so it is out of harm’s way for the time being, arrange a trusted neighbor to care for your pets if you are not home when disaster strikes, and know how to find them so you can get yourself and your pet back to safety.
For additional information, such as if you have large pets to get to safety in the event of an emergency, click here.
Do you have Livestock? Prepare a plan for their evacuation as well.
Brace and Bolt Program
In the event of an earthquake, the Brace and Bolt Program suggestions that the furniture in your home is secured to the walls, so that it cannot fall on you. This is essential to maximizing the safety in your home to make evacuation as easy and safe as possible.
The Brace and Bolt Program website above provides an online free education course for contractors and other additional information for building departments and licensed design professionals as well to help them help you through the process of making your home safer.
Insurance
Get in contact with your insurance company to ensure that it can provide you and your family enough coverage in the event of a disaster or emergency. Events as such could include a fire, floods, and earthquake, etc, so be well-prepared!
