Animal Studies Commons^™

This paper reports on a disaster response exercise involving the evacuation of an urban animal shelter. A simulated emergency provided the opportunity to test the shelter’s disaster evacuation capabilities and to illuminate issues that animal stakeholders should address when creating and refining emergency response plans. The participants successfully evacuated all animals from the building in good time, but the exercise highlighted flaws in the standard authority structure used in disaster response, known as the Incident Command System, or ICS. Specifically, the ICS does not easily integrate volunteers who have no training in disaster response but who nevertheless want to help. …