Disaster Preparedness for Animals

Living in paradise. Planning to anyway.

With all of the risks of unexpected events including earthquakes, fires, mudslides, floods, and tsunamis I can’t think of a better place to live and practice. Even though I love to travel and experience other lands and peoples I am always relieved and happy to return home. I just always want to have something to come back to.

Every year in September we increase our awareness participating in Disaster Preparedness month. The theme once again is that of disaster preparedness for our homes and businesses; preparing for the unexpected such as it is and for myself also preparing as a veterinary infrastructure to help our populations of clients and their pets. To do this we want to prepare ourselves so we may be able to help each other. We should do our due diligence every month, not just in September.

There certainly is no reason to stop your daily living activities to surround yourselves with fear of the inevitable earthquake that is predicted to come sometime in the next 50 years. That’s a 90% prediction over that many years but much less than a 3-4% chance in any one year. We have about 10,000 quakes in So Cal every year but they are so small they’re rarely felt. It’s hard to live far enough away from a fault zone that stretches 800 miles if you want to live in California.

You need not worry about those Tsunamis so much. However we have had warnings in 2009 following the Samoan earthquake, in 2010 following the Chilean earthquake and in 2011 following the earthquake in Japan, and as recently this week from the 8.3 that rocked Chili once again.

We have experienced a number of dreadful fires with often disastrous consequences and loss of human and animal life. Residential fires are the third leading cause of accidental death in the home. Fire kills more Americans each year than all the other natural disasters combined.

Because our counties are semi-desert areas, we are prone to flooding when the rains and winds are heavy. Flash floods can move boulders, rip out trees, knock down bridges, and destroy buildings, and the cleanup is a mess. Six inches of moving water can knock you off your feet and 24 inches can float an SUV. And who wants to be caught in resultant landslides that cost the country more than $4 billion annually?

The news seems to capture the wrath of Mother Nature spreading her fury over the southeast and middle America with tornadoes in the Spring and hurricanes at this time of year. We can experience extremes of heat or cold in this great state depending on where we reside, causing hardship and even death.

There’s other stuff like terrorism, cybercrime, chemical spills of double bubble bad stuff, pandemics, nuclear meltdowns and the like.

Certainly we choose to live and work where we want to for a variety of reasons and a little planning to prevent and mitigate damage can go a long way. What might happen obviously has not deterred us from living and working here.

So, a little preparedness is bound to go a long way and I’m thinking that 60% or more of us that aren’t so prepared could use a little help (prodding).

What I have found out is the planning process takes out some of the unproductive fear and phobias and mitigates the aftermath of chaos and destruction that results from being completely blindsided. I personally have had to do some reorganizing of my own physical and financial household and business. It’s never “done”. Mine is a work in progress. Sometimes I’m on it and other times I’m not. I figure a quarterly rotation and revaluation of my supplies and quantities of supplies should be enough so I get to it every 6 months or so. And yes, storage space is at a premium and my car would rather be in the garage than competing for space with those 5 gallon water bottle jugs so I moved them to our breezeway. By the way, I don’t pay attention to those earthquake apps (because my wife gives me the alerts whether I want them or not, bless her fearful little heart).

How prepared are YOU? What about your neighbors and neighboring businesses? Are you WORKING WITH THEM to prepare? Do you really think you will have the abundance needed to help and assist those that have not helped themselves? I’m not perfect but I am more than 60% prepared, or at least I was last month before I realized much of what I had in the way of canned goods was expiring. But I’ll get there.

Living in paradise; because we can. Because even though we are prone to 13 of the 16 possible federally-identified natural and man-made threats, it’s a beautiful place in which we live, play, and work. More than half of all US homes are located in areas prone to tornadoes, earthquakes, or hurricanes. So, essentially, we’re all in the same boat, and hopefully won’t need a real boat to share when “the big one” hits.

They say “It’s not if, but when”. Accept it. Be ready. Be ready to move on. And if you want some ideas on how you can help our animal population and yourselves please visit our website at www.redondoshoresvet.com and click on the preparedness icon to download information on preparedness for the pet owner soon , before soon, becomes too late.

Be safe,

Dirk Yelinek, DVM

www.redondoshoresvet.com