Accessibility to emergency information and services: evacuations: pets.

Assembly Member Zbur, with Senator Allen as coauthor, advances a measure that anchors pet rescue and information-sharing in local emergency planning while instituting a 30-day hold on certain pet dispositions during evacuations.

The core change requires that, at the next update of each city’s or county’s emergency plan, officials designate procedures for rescuing pets from areas under an evacuation order, subject to approval by the incident commander and coordination with the emergency management authority, for pets whose owners are believed to be alive at the time of evacuation. The procedures must specify timelines or conditions for rescues, and may include a requirement for a liability waiver from residents returning to evacuated areas. Reentry to evacuated zones remains contingent on incident conditions and the incident commander’s approval. In addition, the plan must designate a person or entity to provide information about evacuating pets and publish this contact information on the jurisdiction’s website, along with resources for reunification and multiple methods of disseminating those resources.

Public-facing requirements expand to include the designated contact, a list of rescued animals linked on the home page, and multimodal channels for distributing pet-rescue information. Separately, the bill adds a 30-day hold on adoption, euthanasia, or transfer of a pet rescued from an evacuation area, with a local animal control agency allowed to transfer the pet to in-state partners during the hold if it maintains records to facilitate owner reunification. After the hold period, euthanasia would be prohibited if a rescue organization has notified the agency of its willingness to take custody and completes the transfer; there are exceptions for irremediably suffering pets or those relinquished or surrendered by their owner.

Implementation and fiscal provisions establish that the trigger is the next update to the city’s or county’s emergency plan, with compliance integrated into existing transmission requirements to the Office of Emergency Services. The measure creates a state-mandated local program, meaning local agencies are eligible for reimbursement for mandated costs if the state mandates those costs, though no explicit appropriation is provided in the bill. The program relies on existing cost-reimbursement frameworks and does not specify penalties for noncompliance.

The bill’s findings highlight concerns about animals left behind during evacuations, the perception of pets as family members, and a precedent set by federal PETS Act requirements, framing the policy rationale for integrating pet-rescue procedures and information access into local disaster planning. Stakeholders—pet owners, animal-control agencies, shelters, and emergency responders—would be subject to new planning duties, recordkeeping, and public-information obligations, with potential operational and funding implications as local jurisdictions implement the updated plans and associated processes. Ambiguities noted by authors, such as defining “eligible for adoption” and the exact data elements for pet-location records, may warrant further clarification in committee analysis.