So I was researching on the Friends of Animals website and I realized that Kentucky does not have a disaster plan. Does anyone have an ideas or suggestions on who I would get in contact with in order to help the state prepare a disaster plan? Any information would be helpful.

The way I understand it, the state Office of Emergency Management puts together an outline of what will be included in disaster planning, then passes it down to the counties to impliment. I would think Kentucky would have a strong interest in preparig for animals, with the horse industry in the Blue Grass area. Many states learned the lesson from Katrina. Here in WI it was the problems that pet owners caused during the Weyauwega train derailment in '96. I can link you with newspaper acounts of the derailment and evacuation if you need examples to convince your state. Meanwhile, while you're waiting for the state to get it's act in gear, talk to your county Office of Emergency Magement (a division of the Sherriffs office in many places) and see if they'll put something togeather on the county level. That's what some counties in IL are doing since the state doesn't realy have a plan there either. At LEAST try to get your local animal shelter to get a plan together, because that's who pet owners will turn to if anything happens. HSUS has some very good handbooks for shelters on planning both a disaster plaan for the shelter it's self, and for the community.

I thought it was strange that Kentucky has no disaster plan but according to FOA they don't. That would be great if you could link me the pages to the newspaper accounts. I think it would be helpful.
I don't think that I have heard of a local Office of Emergency Management but I will check into that. And for some reason I never thought of looking on the HSUS page but I will check with them.
Our local shelters here are not the greatest so I am sure that they could use information and help will planning a disaster plan. Thank you for all the information. If you think of anything else I would greatly appreciate it.

I tried getting into the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal Archives but my computer didn't cooperate. The site also says that searching and recieving a list of articals with the first paragraph of each is free, but if you are not a subscriber, seeing the full article will cost you $2.50 per article. The coverage of the incident included five articles that mention the pet owners. I have printouts; it might be cheaper to just xerox them and send them US Post. If you're still interested, send me a private message with your address. (click on my screen name to the left of this reply) I don't know if you can access the two handbooks from the HSUS site, but you could probably e-mail them. You're looking for "Developing a Community Disaster Plan for Animals" and "Disaster Planning for Animal Facilities". I got copies by mail a few years ago. When I took a training class on disaster sheeltering, they gave us CDs with lots of stuff on them, including these two publications, and an article on this event from their own magazine. Again, if you can't get copies from them, I can xerox mine for you. Also, the HSUS Disaster Animal Rescue Team (DART) training is aimed at helping shelters set up their own DART teams to handle disasters locally. Your shelter might want to look into this as well.

Another good idea is to have the shelter get togeather with the local fire department (if they haven't already). If the firefighters can tour the shelter, they will be familiar with the layout and know where the gas and electric shutoffs are. And the shelter might wast to offer the firefighters some training on how to handle animals in a housefire. And if your fire department's not already equiped, oxygen masks for pets are available at wholesale if you go through www.helpanimalsink.org.

I checked out the Friends of Animals site. I found the same color coded map of the US that i found right after Katrina. Is that what you are refering to that says KY has no plan for animals? I don't know if you noticed, but that map was last updated in mid 2006. Many states have added pets to their disaster planning since then. I did a search and found this link http://kyem.ky.gov/about/areaoffices.htm which will give you contact info for state and county Emergency Management offices so you can ask where things stand in KY.