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At PSI’s recent 2015 Pet Sitter World Educational Conference & Expo, Denise Fleck, owner of Sunny-dog Ink, presented a general session on Pet Disaster Preparedness. During her presentation, she shared an interesting—and startling—statistic on human reactions to emergencies.

According to a study by Dr. John Leech at the University of Lancaster, in an emergency:

• 75% have to be told what to do.
• 10-15% react inappropriately.
• 10-15% react appropriately.

As a professional pet sitter, it’s important that you be in the 10-15% of people who have the knowledge and preparation to react appropriately in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.

Depending upon where you live, possible natural disasters may vary—from hurricanes to blizzards to flooding and wildfires. Regardless of your location, man-made disasters or emergency situations, such as plane crashes, train derailments, chemical spills and widespread power outages, could occur and prevent you from reaching pets in your care or force you to quickly evacuate.

Preparation is key to keeping pets safe when disaster strikes.

Imagine an unexpected disaster or emergency occurs and you only have 30 minutes to evacuate:

• Can you gather all of your pets into carriers?
• Do you have enough carriers for the number of pets you have?
• Are all pets wearing ID?
• Do you have a current photo of your pets, in the event that a pet escapes?

As a professional pet sitter, it’s important that you answer these questions to have a plan in place—not only for your personal pets—but also for the pets you may be caring for at that time.

According to Denise Fleck’s Pet Disaster Preparedness presentation, other questions you should answer in advance to prepare for an evacuation include:

• Where are you going to go?
• Does everyone know where to meet up? (This could include your family members and/or your staff sitters)
• Is your gas tank at least ½ full?
• Do you have emergency money in small bills?
• Do you have your pet’s medical records, food, litter pans, cleaning supplies, needs for pocket pets, birds and other species?
• Do you have supplies needed for your two-legged family members?

Your pet-sitting clients need a disaster plan as well.

The information above is important to share with your pet-sitting clients to help them prepare for a possible disaster that forces them to evacuate with their pets. But, it’s also important to have a specific plan in place should a disaster occur while the pet owners are out of town.

An important question to ask is if the pet owners have designated caregivers that could evacuate their pets if a disaster occurred. If so, it’s important that you have complete, up-to-date contact information for the designated caregiver.

If YOU are your clients’ designated caregiver in the event of an evacuation, you’ll want to make sure that clients have pre-packed the supplies needed for their pets should an evacuation occur. You can’t possibly have enough supplies for all of your clients’ pets.

It will also be important that first responders know that you are a designated caregiver for your clients’ pets and have permission to access the home to remove pets if necessary. Consider having your signed pet-sitting contract and a pet alert wallet card as proof.

Additional Pet Disaster Preparedness Tips:

5 Things Learned While Pet Sitting in a Blizzard

13 Items You Need in Your Pet First Aid Kit

Has a disaster ever forced you to evacuate with your pets or your clients’ pets? Share your stories below.