BY PEPPER FISHER

Port Angeles – We reported this week on the large number of cats and dogs from the devastating southern California wildfires that have lost their homes and families, many of whom have been flown to Seattle and other areas and are now looking to be adopted.

It’s only a coincidence that this week the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office Division of Emergency Management announced they’ll be hosting a planning committee kickoff meeting to create an Animal Disaster Plan for our region, but those California fires vividly illustrate why it’s a good idea.

Emergency Management Program Coordinator Justine Chorley says the need for a plan has been on her radar for years, but the time has come to put the ideas into action.

“This really has to be a community effort, because I do have pets, but I’m not an expert. So I need the expert advice from the rescue groups, and the people who have horses, and the vets. We need all of their advice to write a comprehensive plan for the county. We also intend to create some educational materials that we can hand out to individuals and we can do talks and classes and things like that, to kind of educate people on how to prepare their animals for an emergency.”

The meeting will take place on Friday January 24, from 5:00 to 6:30PM in the Clallam County Emergency Operations Center in the basement of the courthouse. The meeting will include an orientation to the history, purpose, and scope of the plan, and the goals of the committee. At the end of the meeting, committee members will be identified and organized into subcommittees to work on the finer details of the plan.

The purpose of the Animal Disaster Plan is to protect people, animals and property during a disaster and to ensure the effective evacuation and sheltering of pets and livestock.

Chorley acknowledges that local emergency plans often are focused on a major earthquake, and for good reason. But she believes having a plan that includes our pets will most likely be needed, as in California right now, in the event of a wildfire. That said, the plan will only be a set of guidelines.

“Even though we’re going to have a plan, as we saw in the recent La fires, the best plans…you can just have circumstances where you’re still going to have problems, or your plan’s going to fall apart. And so, we just need to be realistic about that. It is important to have a plan, but it could fall apart, and we need to be ready to just, you know, make it up as we go along.”

The public is welcome to attend on January 24, and a virtual attendance option will be available via a link, posted with the meeting announcement, in the News Flash section at clallamcountywa.gov.