Not without my pet – the full article

Abstract  

In the Second Lebanon War, as a result of a lack of planning for the evacuation of people from these affected areas, an acute phenomenon saw families and individuals refusing to leave without their pets.

Others had to abandon their domestic animals in order to save themselves, leaving no effective arrangement for the pets they left behind.

Thus, there is little doubt that it is indeed necessary to make contingency plans for the organized evacuation of pet-owning families/individuals . These plans should offer good and effective solutions, and thus in threatening situations to the population (the main reason for the evacuation plan) the strategy will also be effective in preventing the abandonment and neglect of pets, mainly dogs.

Introduction

Disasters, representing a threat to society, man and animals alike, have many sides. In the Second Lebanon War two contrasting phenomena a were noted. On the one hand, families and individuals refused to evacuate without their pets. On the other hand, however, there were many people who abandoned their pets without providing a proper solution for them in order to save themselves. The war thereby emphasized the huge difference in attitudes - both positive and negative - of people towards their pets.

Human-animal relations

Human-animal relations encompass various substantial mental and emotional needs, including social support (Cobb, 1976), a reduction in the negative impact of stress in crisis situations (Siegal, 1990), the animal's role as a substitute image for a child (Hirch-Pasck et al., 1980) or adult (it is there for its owner unconditionally), attachment as a psycho-biological mechanism that provides a sense of security (Ainsworth 1989, Bowlby 1969), non-verbal communication and understanding, or a transitional object.

For certain people, an animal can be a version of a transitional object that enables them to express needs, fantasies and aggressions, and thereby induces a sense of calm, consolation, warmth and security for its owner.

Family evacuation failure 

In 1992, Hurricane Andrew left many people and animals without shelter. The result was an obvious need to take animals into consideration when making emergency plans. The concern for the animals became a critical factor in the emergency program, in light of the fact that people's needs were tightly bound with those of the pets they owned. For this reason Florida was the first state to present a solution for animals in its disaster readiness plan.

Shortly after, in 1993, the veterinary services were united with the Federal Bureau that deals with the readiness for disaster plans, in order to establish SART (State Animal's Response Teams). These teams were trained and equipped for several scenarios (natural disasters like floods, hurricanes etc... as well as man-made disasters). Thus, the human-animal relationship has practical ramifications for disaster management. In the past, managers of these programs ignored or gave very little attention to the subject of animals, and pets in particular. Awareness of the issue has increased in recent years, but programs for evacuating animals and pets in disaster times are still relatively new.

• Pet owners will endanger themselves by refusing to evacuate disaster areas unless they are convinced that there is a proper solution for their pet's safety.
• Furthermore, the most common reason for people to return to disaster areas is to save their pets, while risking their own lives.
• Health and safety regulations do not permit pets in public shelters (with the exception of guide dogs). The lack of a proper answer for the pets and their owners’ needs may sometimes result in evacuation refusal.
  

Various studies indicate a high percentage of failure to evacuate populations from disaster areas (Heath, Kass, Beck, Glickman ,. 2001) (Heath, Voeks, 2000). Most of them point to a 20% failure, for different reasons:

• The factor that constantly appeared as influential when deciding to evacuate families was the presence of children in the families.
• Failure to evacuate families with children is very low, even when they own pets.
• Failure or delay in evacuation can also be related, according to these studies, to the presence of elderly people within the evacuated family. In addition, elderly pet owners do not want to be evacuated without their animals (Rosenkoetter et al., 2007).
• Families who own pets may not be willing to evacuate without their pets, but the animals are not permitted in public shelters. Dog owners who are about to be separated from their pets will refuse to be evacuated
• The main reason for failing to evacuate families with no children is the presence of a pet in the household.
• The probability of failure to evacuate of families without children rises by 30%, as a function of the number of animals in the household, in comparison to families with children.
• Over 90% percent of evacuees who owned pets moved temporarily to live with family or friends.
• 80% of the people who returned to disaster areas did so in order to save their pets.
  

Failing to evacuate 

There are many ramifications to the fact that animals are not always evacuated from disaster areas. While we should not forget that during a disaster our first obligation is to save and rescue people, from a humanitarian point of view we must also not abandon the animals at the scene. Studies have shown that households that have treated their pets responsibly, continue to do so in times of crisis. Households that took their pet to the vet regularly, vaccinated and registered it, had higher evacuation rates.

Households that tried to save their pets were generally families with children and several pets, in contrast to households that made no effort to rescue their animal (Beck, Glickman, Heth, kass, 2001). One explanation for that includes their misjudgment of the seriousness of the event, or the lack of available proper evacuation instructions.

Abandoning pets 

The high frequency of failure to evacuate pets from different disaster scenes, as portrayed in the article by Heath et al (2004), indicates that the abandonment phenomenon is also common in everyday life and is not necessarily correlated to a lack advance notification, or the dog owner's absence. The ratio between animals that are abandoned during crisis and disaster times and to those that are abandoned in normal times is the same.

Therefore, the study suggests that there is a sub-section in the population of pet owners that will forsake their pets at one time or another, and that disaster merely accelerates the process. The study suggests several factors that may predict abandonment: a family with a weak human-animal bond, the pet does not live inside the home, and little effort is made in caring for the animal (such as regular visits to the vet).

The Israeli need for a community emergency readiness plan

Family and community preparations and readiness plans have not been sufficiently prioritized by the government in Israel, despite its having faced many crisis situations in the past. This has been due to the fact that over the years the matter has been solely the responsibility of the IDF, which also included handling the home-front population in accordance with previously established procedure.

The Intifada, the Gulf War, the First and Second Lebanon Wars, all changed the patterns of combat, including affecting the home front. Crisis situations were now experienced by civilian population centers, and the contingency plans did not fit the real needs of the citizens. Critical questions, such as evacuating citizens, activating an emergency period economy, distributing food and medicine to populations in target areas, preparing shelters for evacuated citizens, communications, psychological welfare, handling individual special needs, and many other topics, were not discussed or dealt with.

The Second Lebanon War clearly proved that the local authorities play an important and crucial role in determining the public-civilian agenda during a time of crisis. Therefore, we must ensure that home-front welfare during crisis times will not disappear from the public agenda. Acknowledging the importance of the local authority during a time of crisis, constructing permanent mechanisms for coordination between the local and the national levels and creating a strong infrastructure throughout the country, will enable maximum effective function in such crucial times.

The local authority is the governmental body that maintains daily contact with the community and provides for its main services. It is the main address for most civilians to file their complaints. It is also the provider of necessary services for the community, and the commanding body of many crucial resources for the readiness of the home front during emergency situations

The "Absence of Sovereignty" was one of the main failures that occurred according to many reports that were published after the Second Lebanon War. In general, the State was not available to its citizens in their time of need and felt itself exempt from being so. Most of the government offices closed when the war started, without giving any notice, explanation, or providing a proper substitute.

In the absence of the government, the local authorities were left to take care of the community, with emphasis on the welfare departments to provide suitable solution to the people who needed them the most. In light of this absence of sovereignty, society had to find its own solutions. Non-profit organizations, social organizations and philanthropists provided real-time solutions, sometimes in life- threatening situations. Some organizations did so as part of their original mission. Others adapted themselves to the situation in order to help with Israel's northern citizens’ urgent needs.

There is thus a clear need to construct a community and family readiness plan that will constitute a solid foundation for the population's strength and ability to function in stressful times. The planning should take into consideration the special needs of the population, which will include households with pets. The proper management of this issue requires identifying and defining the needs and, subsequently, establishing the criteria and priorities for providing an appropriate response.

Survey of pet-owning families/households

Objective

To examine the influence and ramifications of owning pets on populations needing to be evacuated from disaster areas (natural disasters/war or terror afflicted areas).

A questionnaire was distributed to pet-owning households. The distribution was carried out mainly in the north of Israel, to veterinary clinics, pet supply stores and to random pet owners.

A total of 115 questionnaires were collected. 109 of them were filled in by dog owners and 6 by people who own cats.

The questionnaire had 3 parts as follows:

• Whether pet owners treat the pet as a part of the family?
• The pe’s living place in emergency and in normal times.
• The correlation between the surveyed individuals entering a safe room (shelter) and the pet's being brought into the same place.
• The pet as an evacuation delay factor.
• In the case of evacuation without the animal, where would it remain?
• The authorities' involvement in the treatment of pet owners and abandoned animals.
• The importance of establishing an evacuation service for pets/animals during an emergency.
  

Conclusion

The results of the study map the population, its attitude toward its pets, and its behavior during the Second Lebanon War. The survey also highlights the weak points that require further consideration regarding future emergency situations.

1. It is without doubt clear that the majority of the population treat their dog/pet like a member of the family, irrespective of any variables such as sex, age, living area, family status, number of children or children’s age.
2. The tighter the bond between the human and the animal, the greater the probability that the animal will reside inside the family home.
3. 26.6% of those surveyed did not evacuate their home since there was no proper solution for their pet.
4. 63.4% of those surveyed, who did evacuate their home, had to do so without their pet. Since they did not want to leave the pet inside the house, they set it free (66.7%) without food or water (20%). These findings show the hard reality of families owning pets during the Second Lebanon War, and reinforce the discussed phenomenon of abandoning pets with no food or water.
5. Israeli society is ready to host families owning pets. Despite this fact, there is a need to find alternative solutions for pet owners. There was no unity among the surveyed individuals regarding the preferable answer to this problem.
6. The local authorities’ failure to function during the Second Lebanon War, in regard to pets, emphasizes the need for an appropriate solution to the matter.
7. There is a need for an accessible and relevant database for this population. There is a lack of guidance information on the web and no internet site at which one could find host families.
   

Conclusions and recommendations

The main conclusion of our study emphasizes and characterizes a sector of the community that is differentiated from the rest. This difference requires a special approach in the emergency readiness plans, just as other special needs populations require.

Since pet-owning households are a heterogeneous group, it is necessary to provide several possible solutions that can provide alternative answers to the issue.

For the time being pet owners will have to seek individual solutions for their animals during a time of crisis, such as "animal friendly" guest houses, animal shelters or veterinary quarantine facilities.

Hall (2004) and his colleagues as well as Irvine (2004, 2006) recommend, in light of the current situation, to continue to develop the ability to recruit funds as part of constructing the community readiness plan.

It is our humane duty to construct community evacuation and readiness plans that will take into consideration the population of animal companions. These plans should include:

• Work of veterinary staff in the community who will be responsible for developing emergency support plans, by means of pro-active consultations with the pet owners (creating and providing informative brochures at vet clinics).
• Increasing awareness by providing information, guidance and animal evacuation plans as part of the overall family preparation plan (like the ready.gov brochure).
• Constructing a national database (by geographical and animal type) of families that are ready to host evacuated families with pets in emergency situations.
• Increasing the "animal friendly" shelters such as quarantine stations/animal foster families/dog shelters that are willing to host animals left behind when owners have to evacuate their home and cannot take their pets with them.
• Training volunteers and integrating them with the "green" rescue teams.
• Green first aid, as well as steps to prevent PTSD for the rescue teams.
• Introducing the topic of rescue and emergency in veterinary schools and animal therapy programs.
• A national solution should be considered, such as annexation of a motel by the emergency economy authority to be used as a temporary animal shelter.
• Use of the media to create a public debate on the wellbeing of animals during crisis times.
• Expanding and adding to the already existing data on pet preparation during crisis/emergency times, on websites that provide updated information to the public at all times, such as the home-front command website (which lacks this kind of information at the moment), the Ministry of Agriculture, and the veterinary services site, as well as those of the local authorities.
• To use the help of non-profit originations connected with animal care to market, in a social sense, the importance of the subject; to prepare surveys and deliver recommendations to the local authorities.
  

One of the lessons learned from the Second Lebanon War is the need to recognize the need for a national organization that will focus on preparing and dealing with various emergency situations.

This organization should work to achieve a change in the current situation by raising awareness of various emergency situations, while recognizing the importance of preparing the home front for these scenarios, including households with animals.

We hope that our study has emphasized the need for taking special care of animals and their owners during crisis times, as an integral part of the family preparation plan.

"Changing patterns of population evacuation in times of emergency for pet-owning families," Hagit Less, Haim Levi