Emergency Preparedness Update
What Recent Disasters Are Teaching Animal Shelters About Emergency Preparedness
Recent floods and hurricanes continue to demonstrate why evacuation planning, emergency foster capacity, outside partnerships and continuity planning matter before a disaster reaches the shelter.
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Emergency plans are often written around individual hazards: hurricanes, floods, fires, tornadoes, power failures and other emergencies.
Real disasters, however, rarely affect only one part of shelter operations.
A flood can make a building unusable while disrupting transportation, communications, staffing and animal housing at the same time. A hurricane may require animals to leave the facility before the most dangerous conditions arrive. A major regional emergency can suddenly create the need for receiving partners, temporary foster homes, transportation and additional capacity.
Recent animal-welfare disaster responses provide useful examples of how those pressures can unfold.
Two situations are particularly useful for shelter managers reviewing their emergency plans: the 2026 Texas flooding response and the experience of Brother Wolf Animal Rescue following Hurricane Helene.
These events do not establish new emergency-management standards. Instead, they provide real-world examples that reinforce several principles already found in established animal-welfare preparedness guidance.
Recent event
Texas Flooding: Creating Capacity Before More Animals Arrive
During severe flooding in Texas in July 2026, animal shelters and partner organizations faced evacuations and increased pressure from animals displaced by the disaster.
Best Friends Animal Society reported that eight shelters had evacuated their animals and another eight were anticipating substantial admissions related to displaced pets.
One strategy used during the response was moving adoptable animals who had already been in shelters before the flooding out of the affected region.
A Wings of Rescue flight transported 42 cats and 48 dogs — 90 animals total — to Utah, where Best Friends and partner organizations could receive them.
Importantly, these were animals who were already in shelters before the flooding. Moving them created additional local capacity while efforts continued to reunite disaster-displaced pets with their families.
This illustrates an important planning question:
If your shelter suddenly needed space for animals affected by a disaster, how would you create that capacity?
Possible strategies will differ among organizations and communities, but planning may include:
- pre-arranged receiving partners
- transport partners
- emergency foster activation
- temporary housing options
- coordination with neighboring shelters
- moving eligible animals outside the affected region when appropriate
- plans for maintaining identification and records during movement
The important part is determining those options before the shelter is already overwhelmed.
Recent event
Hurricane Helene: What Happens When the Shelter Itself Is Lost?
Another powerful example comes from Brother Wolf Animal Rescue in Asheville, North Carolina.
Before Hurricane Helene reached the region in September 2024, Brother Wolf had approximately 100 animals at its shelter and another 50 already in foster homes.
According to an ASPCApro case study published in 2026, the organization made a public appeal for emergency foster help the day before the storm.
Community members responded quickly, and the remaining shelter animals were evacuated into foster homes within approximately two hours.
The decision proved consequential.
Hurricane Helene's flooding subsequently destroyed the shelter facility. ASPCApro reports that approximately 12 feet of contaminated water entered the building, destroying kennels, work areas, storage and other infrastructure.
The organization then faced a different emergency-planning problem:
How do you continue operating when the building you planned to operate from no longer exists?
Brother Wolf transitioned to a foster-based operating model and used partnerships, including an existing relationship with the ASPCA Spay/Neuter Alliance, to continue services.
The case demonstrates why continuity planning deserves a place beside evacuation planning.
Evacuating animals protects them from the immediate hazard.
Continuity planning asks what happens next.
Established preparedness guidance
Five Areas Shelter Managers Should Review
Recent disaster responses reinforce several areas that animal shelters may want to examine in their own emergency plans.
1. Outside Partnerships and Receiving Capacity
A regional disaster may affect multiple organizations simultaneously.
ASPCApro recommends developing mutual agreements with organizations outside the local community when shelters may need to evacuate.
Best Friends' Emergency Preparedness Toolkit similarly includes partnership development and identifies external partners such as veterinary providers, transport resources and storage facilities as important planning considerations.
Ask:
Who could receive our animals if organizations immediately around us were affected too?
Do not rely solely on a name in a contact list.
Consider documenting:
- organization
- primary contact
- backup contact
- phone
- types of animals they could potentially receive
- transportation arrangements
- circumstances under which the organization should be contacted
Relationships developed before an emergency may be easier to activate during one. The evacuation planning guide walks through destinations and transport in more detail.
2. Emergency Foster Capacity
Emergency foster homes can provide options when animals need to leave a facility quickly or when shelter capacity must be created for disaster-displaced animals.
The Brother Wolf experience demonstrates how significant community foster participation can become during an emergency.
A shelter should know more than whether it has a foster program.
Consider:
- Who can activate emergency fostering?
- How will foster caregivers be contacted?
- Which animals could be placed quickly?
- What information travels with each animal?
- How are medications and special-care needs communicated?
- What supplies can the shelter provide?
- How will animals and caregivers remain connected in shelter records?
- What happens if a foster caregiver must also evacuate?
Emergency fostering should connect with the organization's larger evacuation, communication and animal-tracking plans.
3. Evacuation Decisions Before Conditions Become Dangerous
One of the hardest emergency decisions can be determining when to move animals.
Waiting until conditions become dangerous can make transportation more difficult and expose staff, volunteers and animals to additional risk.
ASPCApro advises organizations located in areas vulnerable to high winds, storm surge or flooding to have evacuation plans and recommends arranging transportation outside the affected area when a storm is likely to make landfall in the community.
Every organization has different hazards, facilities, responsibilities and local emergency-management requirements.
The important planning question is:
Who has authority to make the evacuation decision, and what information will that person use?
That decision should not have to be invented for the first time while conditions are deteriorating.
4. Continuity When the Facility Cannot Be Used
Emergency planning should not assume the building will remain available after the event.
Flooding, fire, structural damage, prolonged power failure, contamination or another hazard could make some or all of a facility unusable.
Ask:
- Where could essential operations temporarily continue?
- Where could animals go?
- How would staff communicate?
- Which records must remain accessible?
- Which services are truly essential?
- Which services could temporarily stop?
- Who has authority to make those decisions?
- Which partners could provide space, supplies, veterinary support or transportation?
A disaster plan should help the organization protect life during the emergency while a continuity plan helps determine how essential operations continue afterward.
5. Staff and Volunteer Readiness
A written plan has limited value if the people expected to use it do not know it exists or cannot access it.
ASPCApro recommends sharing disaster plans with staff and volunteers.
Best Friends' preparedness resources also include training materials and exercises designed to help organizations practice emergency plans.
Shelters may want to periodically ask:
- Do staff know who is in charge during an emergency?
- Do they know where emergency information is located?
- Can they access essential instructions if internet service fails?
- Do they know the shelter's evacuation and shelter-in-place locations?
- Have key responsibilities been assigned?
- Are backup people identified?
- Have we practiced any part of the plan?
Emergency planning is not only about producing a document.
It is about making the plan usable when normal operations stop being normal.
What Pet Safe SOP Recommends Reviewing This Week
You do not need to rebuild your entire emergency plan today. Start with five questions raised by these real-world events.
1. Could we relocate our animals if this building became unusable tomorrow?
2. Do we have receiving or transport partners outside the area likely to experience the same disaster?
3. Who has authority to order an evacuation, and have we documented that decision authority?
4. How quickly could we activate emergency foster homes?
5. Could staff access essential emergency contacts and instructions if internet service failed?
If any answer is unclear, that does not produce a preparedness score or grade. It simply identifies an area worth discussing before an emergency.
Turn the Lessons Into a Stronger Emergency Plan
Emergency preparedness becomes more manageable when organizations break the work into smaller decisions.
Pet Safe SOP's free planning resources can help shelters work through those decisions.
Animal Shelter Emergency Plan: What Should Be Included?
Help define emergency leadership, hazards, critical systems, evacuation, communication, recovery and other core planning areas.
Read the Emergency Plan Guide →Animal Shelter Disaster Preparedness Checklist
Use the 20-section checklist to identify questions your organization may still need to answer.
Use the Disaster Preparedness Checklist →Animal Shelter Hurricane Preparedness Guide
Review hurricane planning from early threat monitoring through warning, immediate hazard and recovery.
Read the Hurricane Guide →Animal Shelter Evacuation Planning Guide
Work through evacuation authority, destinations, transportation, animal tracking, movement and return planning.
Read the Evacuation Guide →Animal Shelter Emergency Foster Planning Guide
Plan how emergency foster caregivers can be recruited, activated, matched, supported and tracked.
Read the Emergency Foster Guide →Animal Shelter Emergency Communication Plan
Plan leadership communications, staff notifications, backup communication methods, public messaging and corrections.
Read the Communication Guide →
A Plan Should Work When the Normal System Doesn't
The most useful lesson from real disasters may be that emergencies rarely unfold exactly as expected.
A building may become unusable.
Internet or phone service may fail.
Staff may be unable to reach the facility.
Animals may need to move.
Community members may arrive needing help.
Other shelters may simultaneously be dealing with the same emergency.
Preparedness cannot eliminate those problems.
It can reduce the number of critical decisions that must be invented during the crisis.
That is the purpose of emergency planning: deciding as much as reasonably possible before the emergency makes those decisions harder.
Build Your Shelter's Emergency Plan
Pet Safe SOP helps animal shelters organize emergency contacts, decision authority, critical systems, operating policies, hazard-specific actions, evacuation planning, offline emergency information and recovery review in one structured planning system.
Build Your Shelter Emergency PlanSources & Further Reading
Pet Safe SOP distinguishes between recent real-world examples and established preparedness guidance. The disaster examples discussed above illustrate how emergencies affected particular organizations; they are not presented as universal standards. Planning recommendations should be adapted to each organization's hazards, facility, responsibilities and local emergency-management requirements.
ASPCApro
- Animal Shelter Resilience After Disaster: Brother Wolf Animal Rescue Charts a New Path(opens external site in a new tab)
A 2026 case study examining Brother Wolf Animal Rescue's evacuation before Hurricane Helene, loss of its Asheville facility and subsequent foster-based continuity model.
- How Animal Shelters and Clinics Can Prepare for Hurricanes(opens external site in a new tab)
Preparedness guidance covering written disaster plans, staff and volunteer preparation, evacuation planning, foster networks and relationships with organizations outside the affected community.
- Animal Shelter Disaster Response Resources(opens external site in a new tab)
A collection of animal shelter disaster-response resources addressing preparedness, communication, fostering, temporary sheltering and recovery.
Best Friends Animal Society
- Flooding in Texas — Emergency Response(opens external site in a new tab)
Updates from the July 2026 Texas flooding response, including shelter evacuations, capacity pressures and transport of animals already in shelters before the disaster.
- Answering the Call to Help Pets Impacted by Disaster(opens external site in a new tab)
A September 2026 report about emergency-response volunteers assisting after approximately 90 shelter pets were transported from Texas to Utah following severe flooding.
- Emergency Preparedness Toolkit & Resources(opens external site in a new tab)
Shelter-focused emergency planning resources covering hazard analysis, evacuation, continuity, shelter-in-place planning, partnerships, fostering, supplies, training and emergency exercises.
Source access reviewed: September 29, 2026
Pet Safe SOP is not affiliated with or endorsed by ASPCA, ASPCApro, Best Friends Animal Society or the other organizations referenced in its educational materials.
Learn more about how Pet Safe SOP researches its emergency-planning resources →