Located along California's San Andreas Fault, the city of San Francisco is likely to take precautions(,) in the event of the next big earthquake. According to aNew York Timesreport, emergency planners in San Francisco are not only thinking of human evacuation(,) plans in the event of an earthquake, but also of how to care for pets during a natural disaster. Ideally, the planners will be able to train pet-disaster responders who work to evacuate dogs, cats and other household pets from the disaster site to one of the 125 temporary animal shelters that will be set up or, if the pet is injured, it will be brought to an emergency animal medical unit where there will be people on hand to tend to the pet's injury. The city's "no-pets-left-behind" policy results from the great number of pet deaths during the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. As emergency responders arrived to rescue people isolated in their homes during Katrina, hurricane victims were told that they could not take their pets along with them when evacuating; thus, many pet owners were forced to make the heart-breaking decision to save themselves while leaving their pets behind to perhaps meet their deaths. Since then, the U.S. has passed the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act of 2006, allocating federal funds for animal disaster planning projects. Yet, not all counties are as progressive as San Francisco has been in the effort to protect pets in the event of a natural disaster. Pets are after all, a large part of San Francisco's population -- overnumbering the number of school age children in the city. Over the last three years, San Francisco has received $350,000 in federal funds _ to animal disaster preparedness efforts in order to protect animals in the case of a disaster such as an earthquake. The city is still working on obtaining $300,000 to pay for an emergency animal unit. Until then, animal lovers in San Francisco will continue to work to ensure that pets are never an afterthought when it comes to rescues during earthquakes or other life threatening situations. What do we know about Hurricane Katrina?
A great number of pets died during Hurricane Katrina. San Francisco's "no-pets-left-behind" policy had been made before Hurricane Katrina. The pet owners chose to sacrifice themselves in order to save their pets. Emergency responders failed to rescue the hurricane victims.