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 The lack of sufficient emergency shelter to house evacuees along
with their dogs and cats in Florida’s Miami-Dade metropolitan area
may prolong older pet owners’ hesitation to leave home when a
hurricane hits, researchers warn in the Journals of Gerontology:
Social Sciences.
“We do need to make sure that we have pet-friendly accommodations
available for people, that these accommodations are comfortable and
that we don’t have to separate people from their pets,” said lead
author Rachel Douglas, a sociology doctoral candidate at Florida
State University in Tallahassee.
“If they don’t feel they can find a comfortable accommodation for
themselves and their pet, they might stay at home,” she said in a
phone interview.
Emergency managers took lessons from the 2005 Hurricane Katrina
disaster, when many Gulf Coast residents in the storm’s path did not
evacuate because shelters didn’t allow pets (http://reut.rs/2xLHU9O).
Today, some shelters in hurricane-prone states do accept companion
animals, but during the most recent hurricanes that hit Texas and
Florida, anecdotal reports suggest pet-friendly shelter was still
difficult to find (http://reut.rs/2kW9xvQ).
Having pets is one of the best predictors that people in harm’s way
won’t heed evacuation orders, said Melissa Hunt, associate director
of clinical psychology training at the University of Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia, who wasn’t involved in the study.
“This puts human lives in danger - both the pet owners themselves
and first responders who might be put in a position to try to rescue
them belatedly,” she said by email.
In the current study, completed before the latest hurricane season,
researchers mapped the need and the availability of pet-friendly
shelters in the Miami-Dade metropolitan area, an urban area
frequently in the eye of hurricanes, and found a shortage.
The need was most acute among pet owners with more limited means and
older adults living farther away from shelters, the study found.
Only 28 of Florida’s 67 counties offer pet-friendly
hurricane-evacuation shelters, the researchers note.
Douglas and her team had theorized that older adults would have a
greater need for pet-friendly shelters. But they found that age was
not a factor, she said.
Still, 34 percent of older adults in the Miami-Dade area have pets,
and 35 percent of them said they would require help evacuating.
Those in need of help were more than twice as likely to anticipate
using a public shelter than those who could evacuate on their own.
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“Pet ownership makes disaster evacuation less likely and more
difficult, especially for elderly owners with more disability and
fewer resources,” Hunt said.
Pet-friendly shelters may ease the problem slightly, she told
Reuters Health. But evacuation becomes complicated for many elderly
pet owners who live long distances from pet-friendly shelters.
In addition to opening pet-friendly shelters, Hunt stressed the
importance of letting evacuees who live with animals know that
shelters willing to take animals are available. In addition, because
of the challenge of locating proof of vaccines when evacuating, she
called for shelters to accommodate all pets regardless of missing
vaccination proof.
“At the very least, a dog's rabies ‘tag’ should be sufficient
evidence of vaccination for that dog,” she said.
The new study’s findings came as no surprise to Daniel Petrolia, a
professor of environmental economics at Mississippi State
University, because they are consistent with his own research.
“I would not, however, jump to the conclusion that more pet-friendly
shelters are needed, because I have no idea what that does to the
cost of operating a shelter, nor do I have any idea what effect that
may have on people without pets going to shelters,” Petrolia, who
was not involved with the study, said by email.
He noted that one limitation of the study is that it fails to
examine whether existing pet-friendly shelters filled to capacity
during recent hurricanes. Another limitation is that the study did
not examine whether a lack of proof of vaccines blocked entry to
dogs and cats at emergency shelters.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2xCzXnq Journals of Gerontology: Social
Sciences, online October 4, 2017.
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