Evacuating a Pet From a Hawaiian Island: The Paperwork That Has to Be Finished Before Your Animal Leaves

Leaving Hawaii with a dog or cat is not the regulated step. Coming back is. The Hawaii Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity requires a resident animal’s rabies vaccinations, blood test and paperwork to be finished before the animal departs. An animal that leaves unprepared can face up to 120 days of quarantine on return. Since a resident dog or cat usually starts with no rabies vaccination, this is months of work, and the day of a fire is the day you find out whether it was done.

If a hazard is arriving now, move. The county’s guidance is about moving, not filing, and the paperwork below is a call you make afterward from somewhere safe.

This page holds the movement rule itself: what Hawaii requires of a resident dog or cat that leaves and comes back, what it requires of livestock crossing between islands, and what it does not appear to waive in a disaster. Related questions live elsewhere: closure thresholds for a single exit road in bridge and causeway closure thresholds with pets, moving uphill on foot in the tsunami pet evacuation plan, and airline rules in can you fly out with a pet during an evacuation, which this page does not restate. Our page on health certificates for crossing state lines covers the mainland version and hands the island version to this one.

On an island, the first destination is on the island

County of Maui’s Emergency Management Agency publishes its evacuation guidance as frequently asked questions. For a tsunami it says: “Go to an area 50 feet above sea level, if possible.” If you cannot reach high ground but are in a multi-story building, go to an upper level. If you are on the beach and cannot reach high ground, go inland as far as you can. If you see an unexpected rise or fall in the coastal water, a tsunami may be approaching, and the county says “Do not wait - instead move inland or uphill as quickly as possible.” It adds that you should go on foot if necessary, particularly if an earthquake has damaged roads and power lines and left debris.

So there is a drive-out or walk-out instruction. It ends at the coastline, and the destination is uphill rather than out of state.

The county’s animal item carries a qualifier this page will not drop. Its list of what to prepare includes a crate or pet carrier, and says that if you need to evacuate, “take your pets and animals with you - provided it is practical to do so.” That is not permission to leave an animal, and it is not a promise that every animal comes. It is an emergency agency acknowledging that the instruction has a limit.

On shelters, the county says pets are allowed at most emergency shelters, but to check and plan ahead. Its separate answer on what to bring to a shelter says pets must be crated. Our tsunami page works through what a crate requirement does to a plan made on foot.

For fire, the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization runs the Hawaii version of the national Ready, Set, Go! program. It says the version is tailored to local wildfire risks and evacuation realities, including “the challenges of limited road access and island communities.” Limited road access, island communities, and a shoreline at the end of every road: that is the geography the rest of this page sits on.

Getting the animal out is not the regulated step

The department says the purpose of the system in the first line of its Animal Quarantine Information Page: Hawaii’s quarantine law is designed to protect residents and pets from the serious health problems associated with introducing and spreading rabies. Its Quarantine FAQs page puts it comparatively: “Hawaiʻi is the only state that is rabies-free.”

Most writing about the system is for someone moving to Hawaii. The reader here already lives there. Under a heading for pets located in Hawaii, the agency says owners wishing to leave with their pets and return without extended quarantine must meet all requirements on the resident checklist for the 5 Day Or Less Program, and that the modified waiting period after a successful rabies blood test must be completed before leaving.

That checklist is Checklist 3, a five-page document dated JUNE 13, 2023. It opens with an asterisked line: “* All requirements on this checklist must be completed before departure from Hawaii.” Just above it, the agency states the consequence: if you cannot meet the requirements, the pet will undergo quarantine for up to 120 days.

The rule behind it, Hawaii Administrative Rules section 4-29-8.2, says dogs and cats moving from Hawaii to other destinations are subject to the chapter’s requirements. To qualify for five days or less of quarantine on return, dogs and cats originating in Hawaii must meet the section’s listed requirements, and subsection (d) sets quarantine of up to 120 days if they are not met. Note the shape of the consequence: it is not that the animal cannot leave. An animal that leaves unprepared faces quarantine on return, and the published maximum is 120 days.

Why the default Hawaii animal starts from zero

The Quarantine FAQs page, stamped “FAQs Updated 5/27/21,” says: “Because Hawaiʻi is rabies free, resident pets are not required to be vaccinated for rabies.”

Now set that beside Checklist 3. It requires at least two lifetime rabies vaccinations “administered more than 30 days apart,” the most recent given in Hawaii and “No less than 14 days before the dog or cat departs Hawaii.” Before any of that, it requires a microchip, “Required before an FAVN rabies antibody blood test is performed.”

Neither document draws the conclusion, so this is our arithmetic. A typical Hawaii-born dog or cat begins with none of the two required vaccinations. The shots are more than thirty days apart, the blood draw comes after the second shot, the laboratory result comes after the blood draw, and the animal cannot depart until at least fourteen days after the laboratory receives the sample. With the laboratory delays below, the honest answer is a multi-month project for the common case.

The agency publishes no total elapsed time for an adult animal, and neither do we, because a household’s timeline depends on what its animal already has on record. It does describe the youngest case. Its Rabies Quarantine Information Brochure, revised August 21, 2019, says a puppy or kitten “will be about 6 months of age by the time preparations are completed.”

The laboratory delay

The Animal Quarantine Information Page says the OIE-FAVN testing laboratories are experiencing longer than usual processing times and results “may be delayed between 1 to 2 months.” It tells owners to plan to avoid arriving without a passing test result, or requesting a Neighbor Island Inspection Permit without one, and says permits will not be issued without a confirmed passing FAVN test result.

The agency’s FAQ for the 5 Day Or Less Program, marked “UPDATED 10/2018,” gives a capitalized warning to Hawaii residents taking a pet out of state. It strongly recommends testing well in advance of departure and verifying the pet has passed before leaving the state, and says that without a passing result and the required vaccinations before departure, the pet will be quarantined for up to 120 days on return.

That warning is written about vacations, not disasters. It applies identically either way, and the difference is that a vacation can be rescheduled.

The pre-departure chain, step by step

This is Checklist 3’s sequence for a resident dog or cat returning to Honolulu. If your return airport is Kona, Kahului or Lihue, the next section is yours and the timings differ. Every veterinary step belongs to a veterinarian licensed in Hawaii. The checklist requires the health certificate to be issued in Hawaii and to carry the animal’s Hawaii address.

Step one, residency and health certificate. The animal must be in Hawaii and not in quarantine. Checklist 3 requires a health certificate issued by a licensed veterinarian in Hawaii for departure from the State, containing the pet’s Hawaii address and departure date. Rule section 4-29-8.2(a)(5) agrees. That certificate proves the animal is a returning resident rather than an arrival.

Step two, microchip. The dog or cat must have an electronic microchip, implanted before the blood test. The checklist asks that it be scanned and verified, and says a pet that cannot be identified by scanning will not qualify for Direct Airport Release or the 5 Day Or Less program and will be assigned to 120 days of quarantine. Our page on auditing a microchip registration and contact chain covers the separate registry question, which the state is not checking here but which gets an animal home to you.

Step three, two rabies vaccinations. At least two in the animal’s lifetime, more than 30 days apart, the latest in Hawaii at least 14 days before departure. The certificates must list the vaccine name, lot or serial number, booster interval, vaccination date and expiration date. Then a trap: the most recent rabies vaccination “must not be expired when your pet returns to Hawaii,” and if the return occurs after it expires, the animal is subject to quarantine. An open-ended displacement can outrun a booster interval.

Step four, the rabies antibody test. Checklist 3 calls for the FAVN test at Auburn University, Kansas State University, the University of Missouri or the Department of Defense laboratory in Texas, and is emphatic: “Do NOT do a RFFIT test.” Two timings govern it. The day after the laboratory received the sample must not be less than 14 days before departure from Hawaii. And the result must be greater than or equal to 0.5 IU/ml. The checklist warns that using an intermediate lab such as Antech or Idexx may delay the date the testing laboratory receives the sample. The 5 Day Or Less FAQ says the result is valid for 36 months from the day the laboratory received the blood.

Departing before the animal has passed the test disqualifies it from the 5 Day Or Less program and Direct Airport Release, according to a Checklist 3 warning. That could be read as a risk only if the result fails. Three other agency documents close that door. The 5 Day Or Less FAQ answers the resident question directly: a pet does not have to stay outside Hawaii for 30 days, but the OIE-FAVN test “must be passed not less than 14 days before departure from Hawaii.” The same answer carries the capitalized warning above, which is unconditional. And the brochure says pets without a documented passing test and required vaccinations before departure will be quarantined for up to 120 days upon return “without exception.”

So the honest reading is the strict one. It is not enough to have drawn the blood before you go. The result has to have come back, and passed, before the animal leaves. That is why the laboratory delay is not a footnote.

Step five, the documents, on a deadline. Checklist 3 says the paper documentation must reach the Animal Quarantine Station 10 days or more ahead of the planned arrival, and lists the completed import form, the original rabies vaccination certificates for the two most recent vaccinations signed in ink by the veterinarian, the fee, and the Hawaii-issued health certificate. It also warns that authorized handlers and transport companies must not be listed as owners. Not identifying the legal owner on the Dog and Cat Import Form (AQS-279) “is considered fraud” and may cause delays and disqualification. If a pet transport service is moving your animal, that sentence is about you.

Step six, the return-side items. Two catch people who did everything else right. If the animal will return more than 14 days after departing, an additional health certificate is required before returning. For a displaced household that is the common case. And a veterinarian must treat the pet for ticks with a long-acting product labeled to kill ticks (the checklist says “Revolution® is not acceptable”) within 14 days of return, with the product name and date recorded on the health certificate. The 5 Day Or Less FAQ repeats the exclusion and adds a caution about a dog product that must not be used on cats. Which product your animal gets is a conversation with your veterinarian and the agency’s published list of acceptable treatments, not this page.

Two return airports, two rule sets

A Maui, Big Island or Kauai family returning home is not returning to Honolulu, and the checklist for their airport is the stricter one.

Advisory A on the Animal Quarantine Information Page, updated 1/24/24, says a Neighbor Island Inspection Permit issued by the department “must be presented to the airline prior to boarding” and is required to fly a cat or dog directly to an approved neighbor island airport. It also says no permits are issued or required to fly a dog or cat into Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu.

Checklist 4, dated JAN 17, 2024, is the resident version for Kona, Kahului and Lihue. The two documents disagree on several rows because they are written for different airports. Blending them into one timeline produces a plan that is wrong for one set of readers.

Requirement	Checklist 3, return to Honolulu (dated JUNE 13, 2023)	Checklist 4, return to Kona, Kahului or Lihue (dated JAN 17, 2024)
Permit needed to board	None.	Neighbor Island Inspection Permit, presented to the airline before boarding.
Documents deadline	10 days or more before arrival	30 days or more before arrival
Most recent rabies vaccination	At least 14 days before departure from Hawaii	At least 30 days before the pet’s date of arrival in Hawaii
Blood sample receipt date	At least 14 days before departure from Hawaii	14 days or more before the dog or cat leaves Hawaii
Veterinary clinic arranged in advance	Not required for direct release in Honolulu.	Required. Owners must contract with and make reservations with a named clinic that confirms to the agency it will meet the flight.

Rule section 4-29-5(c) sets the same deadlines: documents and the permit request no less than thirty days before arrival, a contract with an agent approved by the department to inspect and release each animal, and a valid Neighbor Island Inspection Permit for each animal.

Checklist 4’s warning is why this page treats the neighbor island path as the hard one. If a passing test result is not attained in Hawaii before leaving the state, or the required rabies vaccines are not given, the animal is subject to quarantine on returning until 30 days are completed after a passing test or vaccines, rather than the up to 120 days named in the 5 Day Or Less FAQ. The warning goes on to describe a per-day charge and a program fee, which this page does not reproduce. It ends: “There are no exceptions.”

Arriving at a neighbor island airport without following procedure is not a fine. Checklist 4 says the animal will be denied entry and transported to Honolulu for inspection or quarantine, or out of state at the owner’s expense.

The clinic side is not something the agency arranges for you. The Animal Quarantine Information Page says neighbor island permits will not be issued without confirmation with those facilities. It lists approved clinics by airport, a short list for Kona and for Lihue and a longer one for Kahului, and says these contractors will confirm to the Animal Quarantine Station that they have agreed to perform the inspection and release. In an evacuation those clinics are the busiest, and the confirmation is a prerequisite for the permit, not a follow-up.

Where the agency’s pages disagree

A page quoting only one of the department’s documents could publish a confident sentence that is wrong. Two places do not line up, and a third only looks like a conflict.

The question	The older material	The newer material
Which airports are ports of entry	Quarantine FAQs (stamped “FAQs Updated 5/27/21”): Honolulu is the only port of entry for all animals.	Guide & Service Dogs page (dated September 7, 2018): Honolulu is the only port of entry unless a valid Neighbor Island Inspection Permit has been issued. Advisory A (updated 1/24/24) describes direct release at Kona, Kahului and Lihue under that permit.
Honolulu inspection hours	Checklist 3 (dated JUNE 13, 2023): 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM, with a caution that hours may change without notice.	Advisory B on the Animal Quarantine Information Page: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily, including weekends and holidays.

The port-of-entry row resolves cleanly. The qualified sentence states the same rule with its exception attached, and the live advisory describes the exception operating. Our conclusion, not the agency’s, is that the unqualified FAQ sentence is the older wording of a rule that now carries a documented exception. A reader planning a return to Kona, Kahului or Lihue should work from Checklist 4 and Advisory A. The agency publishes an email address for the Animal Quarantine Station and says email is the best way to reach it, given call volume and the time zone difference.

The third item is a confusion, not a conflict. The Quarantine FAQs page says the 5 Day Or Less program requires a 30-day pre-arrival waiting period, the same figure as the Direct Release Requirements table. The next answer says a pet that arrives before that waiting period has elapsed must remain in quarantine until it completes a 120-day waiting period after passing the test. Thirty days is the wait that qualifies an animal for the short program. A hundred and twenty days is the track it falls onto if it arrives too early. Do not average them. And for a resident animal neither is quite yours: the agency says the waiting period for pets located in Hawaii is modified and must be completed before leaving, and the 5 Day Or Less FAQ spells it out as the 14-day rule above.

The practical instruction: take the checklist for your return airport, take the live page for anything operational such as hours, and email the agency for anything they disagree on. Do not build a schedule on a number from a summary.

The exemption question: does a disaster waive any of this?

This is the question a disaster reader arrives with. The honest answer has three parts.

What the agency publishes as an exemption

The Quarantine FAQs page asks “Are there any exemptions to the quarantine?” and answers: “The law allows exemption to quarantine confinement for:” guide dogs for the blind and certified service dogs for the disabled, and dogs and cats from New Zealand, Australia, Guam and the British Isles. Rule section 4-29-10 designates those four areas as exempt and conditions that status on their remaining free of terrestrial rabies and maintaining entry requirements equal to or more stringent than the State’s.

Disaster is not on the list. And even the service-dog exemption is not an exemption from preparation. The FAQ says guide and service dogs must complete pre-shipment requirements, including a current rabies vaccination and a passing OIE-FAVN test with greater than 0.5 IU/ml. The dedicated page says every service dog must have passed that test before arrival. A passing result is valid for 3 years. That is the strongest available signal about how the system treats an animal that has not done the blood test.

What looks like an emergency route in the rules and is not

Chapter 4-29 has provisions a search for emergency, urgent or disaster will surface. None is a disaster exemption for a household pet.

Section 4-29-8.3 is titled “Movement of dogs and cats requiring urgent diagnostic, medical or surgical procedures not available in Hawaii.” It does let an animal leave and return without quarantine, and it is narrow. It applies on the recommendation of a Hawaii licensed veterinarian for a procedure performed by a Diplomat in a Specialty Board recognized by the American Veterinary Medical Association. It requires a written request to the Animal Quarantine Manager before departure. The animal must be confined within the veterinary hospital for the entire treatment and recovery period and immediately returned to Hawaii after discharge, and kept from contact with any other animal until it is inspected and released on return. It is a route for a referral, not a route out of a fire.

Section 4-29-17.1 is the trap. Its subsection (b) says the maximum processing period is extended indefinitely in the event of a national disaster, state emergency or union strike that prevents the department from fulfilling application or review requirements. Alone, that sounds like it is about pet owners in a disaster. Subsection (d) settles it: the section applies only to application requests for “business or development-related permits” required before forming, operating or expanding a commercial or industrial enterprise. The permits named in subsection (a) are satellite quarantine stations, private hospitals caring for quarantine animals, and performing dogs and cats. If anything, its disaster clause extends the department’s time rather than shortening yours.

The chapter’s defined term. Section 4-29-2 defines Emergency as an unanticipated, unexpected event that reasonably requires a user to travel to the State on an urgent basis, such that the user could not reasonably be expected to have a service animal or exempted guide dog meet all pre-entry requirements. Section 4-29-21(b) creates a Class B designation for a service animal or exempted guide dog that cannot meet some pre-arrival requirements but “must travel to the State with its user for an emergency.” That is a real emergency provision, scoped to service animals and exempted guide dogs traveling with their user. It is not about a household pet leaving a wildfire.

The other uses of the word in the chapter concern an animal already inside the quarantine system, and medicine rather than hazard. Section 4-29-12 lets an animal at a satellite station be removed to an approved veterinary hospital in an emergency, provided the state veterinarian’s office is notified as soon as practical. Section 4-29-13 lets the quarantine manager waive microchip implantation when emergency hospitalization is required. Genuine emergency provisions, all of them about an animal in quarantine needing a veterinarian, none about evacuating an island.

One more phrase to defuse: the department’s livestock page ends its contact block with a line about emergency provisions, after hours or weekends, and a telephone number, (808) 837-8092. That is an after-hours phone routing, not a waiver of anything.

What the wildfire proclamations contain

The governor’s wildfire proclamations carry long lists of statutes suspended for the duration of the emergency. If the State had switched the animal quarantine off during a fire, this is where it would appear. Four of them are available as text: the first (August 2023, signed by Acting Governor Sylvia Luke, reciting that several large wildfires were burning in Hawaii and Maui counties as of August 8, 2023), the fifth, the eighth and the twenty-first (April 2025). The latter three each carry a numbered Suspension of Laws part. None of the four contains the words animal, quarantine, rabies or veterinarian, and chapter 142 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes, under which the quarantine rules are made, is not named in any.

The scope matters. As of the governor’s proclamations index, there was a Thirty-First Proclamation Relating to Wildfires posted June 25, 2026 and a Second Proclamation Relating to the 2026 Wildfire Season posted August 4, 2026. Both are image-only scans with no text layer, so their contents are not covered here. This describes four specific proclamations. It is not a claim that the State has never suspended the quarantine.

Putting it together

This join is our reasoning, not a published agency position. The agency lists its exemptions and disaster is not among them. The exemption it grants an animal on its own status, the guide and service dog route, still requires the pre-arrival blood test. And four wildfire proclamations that suspend dozens of other laws do not touch this one. So a Hawaii household should plan on the assumption that no disaster waiver exists, and treat the pre-departure chain as work to finish in ordinary time. We are not saying the agency could never grant a waiver in a specific case. No published source offers a waiver you could rely on, and a plan built on hoping for one has a 120-day failure mode.

Between the islands: different answers by species

The statute does reach inter-island movement

HRS section 142-2 empowers the department to make rules for inspection and quarantine of animals on introduction into the State or “at any time or place within the State.” Those rules may cover the transportation of animals between the different islands of the State and along the highways. The State plainly has authority over inter-island animal movement. The question is which rules it has made.

Dogs and cats: the chapter is scoped to arrivals from outside the State

Section 4-29-3 limits the chapter to importations of dogs, cats and other carnivores from areas outside of the State of Hawaii, except as the rules provide. The Neighbor Island Inspection Permit lives in that chapter, at section 4-29-5, and Checklist 4 describes flying directly to Kona, Kahului or Lihue from outside the state. The permit is about entering the State at a neighbor island airport.

No agency page says in so many words that a dog or cat may move between the Hawaiian islands without state paperwork. Our conclusion, marked as our own reasoning, is that a purely intra-state move is not an importation and so is not what the neighbor island permit controls. If your plan depends on that, confirm it with the Animal Quarantine Station. Your airline remains a separate gate with its own rules.

One inter-island fact the agency does publish concerns animals already in the system: because of limited weekend inter-island service, pets arriving Thursday or Friday “may not be transferred to satellite quarantine stations and approved hospitals on the neighbor islands until the following Monday.”

Livestock: the state regulates movement between islands, and the barge has its own rules

For livestock the answer is unambiguous. The department’s livestock page has a section on intra-state transport, saying the Certificate of Livestock Ownership/Movement (DC-44) “is a form that accompanies all movements of livestock.” Listed species include cows, bulls, steers, heifers, calves, horses, hogs, sheep, goats, alpacas, llamas, water buffalos and bison. Paper forms are available from the Animal Industry Division, and inter-island transport companies such as Young Bros. will request copies to accompany shipment.

One caution: the page attributes the DC-44 to HRS 142-29. That section is titled Enforcement; citation and summons, is about who may issue a citation, and creates no form. Take the DC-44 requirement from the agency’s own description, and ask the Animal Industry Division directly.

Young Brothers, the inter-island barge operator the department names, publishes the requirements that decide whether an evacuation by sea is possible:

• Booking. Reservations are required for all livestock shipments, and the company recommends booking at least one week before your requested sailing. Booking needs shipper and consignee contacts, ports of origin and destination, a cargo description (box stall, trailer or cowtainer), dimensions and the sail date.
• Equipment. Young Brothers does not provide shipping devices for livestock between the islands. Yours must prevent waste discharge onto the facility, vessel or surrounding waters, carry the owner’s name and phone number, and be able to be forklifted or driven on and off the barge. The customer is responsible for securing the livestock, and the company reserves the right to refuse a shipment.
• Port timing and payment. Shipments are accepted 90 minutes before sailing, with a check-in time given at booking, and must be pre-paid.
• Paperwork. An original signed DC-44, obtainable only from the Division of Animal Industry. Shipments “will be rejected without the original signed off form.”

Every item has a lead time. None is obtainable on the afternoon a fire starts. When to move large animals and what to do when the trailer cannot come is the subject of horse and livestock evacuation basics. What this page adds is that in Hawaii the destination may be across water, and water has a booking calendar.

The airline is a separate gate

Clearing the state does not clear the carrier, and clearing the carrier does not clear the state. They touch at one published point: the Neighbor Island Inspection Permit “must be presented to the airline prior to boarding,” and Checklist 4 adds that it must accompany the animal on the aircraft. The agency also tells owners to check with the airline well in advance because some airlines may not be participating.

Which airlines carry which animals to, from and between the islands, and the temperature, breed and cargo restrictions, are in can you fly out with a pet during an evacuation. Read that page for the carrier question and this one for the state question.

Where a quarantined animal sits, and what it costs

If the paperwork fails, the animal goes into the quarantine system, whose geography is uneven. The Quarantine FAQs page names two neighbor island satellite stations, Kauaʻi Humane Society and Bar-King Dog Kennel on Hawaii Island, and says: “There are no satellite facility on Maui, Molokaʻi or Lanaʻi.” Approved animal hospitals on Maui, the Big Island and Kauaʻi may hold quarantined pets. Even for a satellite kennel, the pet must first come to the Animal Quarantine Station on Oʻahu for identification and examination. Pets usually stay in Honolulu at least two days before transfer, longer for Thursday or Friday arrivals. The main station is on Halawa Valley Street in Aiea, on Oahu.

For a household from Maui, Molokai or Lanai, the animal goes to Oahu first, and where it sits after that depends on arrangements the owner makes in advance with a private facility, while displaced. The agency restricts visits to registered owners, designated co-owners and designated handlers, with an agency-issued visitor pass and photo identification at each visit. That is a manageable inconvenience for a family on Oahu and a significant one for a family just displaced from another island.

The cost of an incomplete file is a separation the agency measures in days, up to a published maximum of 120, arranged from wherever the household has landed. And quarantine is billed. Both checklists publish a program fee, Checklist 4 publishes a daily charge on top, and which applies depends on your return airport. This page does not reproduce the figures, because both checklists say their information may change at any time without notice. Ask the Animal Quarantine Station for the current program fee and daily charge for your path, before deciding whether to fly an unprepared animal.

The checklist: what a Hawaii household should already have done

None of this is urgent on any given day, which is why it does not get done.

• Decide, in ordinary time, whether your household would ever fly an animal to the mainland. If the answer is maybe, finish the preparation in advance, because the agency makes it the condition of returning without extended quarantine.
• Find out whether your dog or cat has any rabies vaccinations on record. Resident pets are not required to be vaccinated, so none is a real answer, and two are required, more than thirty days apart.
• Ask your Hawaii-licensed veterinarian to confirm the microchip is present and scans correctly. The checklist requires it before the blood test, and an unreadable chip disqualifies the animal from both release programs.
• Establish which airport you would return to and use only that checklist: Checklist 3 for Honolulu, Checklist 4 for Kona, Kahului or Lihue.
• If your return airport is a neighbor island, contact an approved veterinary clinic from the agency’s list. Its confirmation to the agency is a prerequisite for the permit.
• Do the rabies antibody test early enough to have a passing result in hand. Results may take one to two months, and permits are not issued without a confirmed passing result.
• Note the expiry of the most recent rabies vaccination and the 36-month validity of the blood test. A long displacement can outrun the booster interval, and an expired vaccination on return means quarantine.
• Keep copies of the vaccination certificates, the blood test result and the Hawaii health certificate somewhere that survives losing the house, and remember the agency wants originals signed in ink sent in advance.
• If you keep livestock, get the DC-44 process from the Animal Industry Division and read the barge operator’s requirements now.
• Ask the Animal Quarantine Station for the current program fee and daily charge for your path, in writing, and write them next to the 120-day figure.
• Write the Animal Quarantine Station’s published email address on the same page as your veterinarian’s number. Where the agency’s documents disagree, that is how you settle it.
• Know your on-island evacuation destination: your zone, your route inland or upslope, and whether you could walk it carrying the animal. In an immediate hazard the instruction is to move, and no paperwork changes that.

What to do on a quiet afternoon

Three things, none of which takes a day.

Find out what your animal already has. One call to your veterinarian answers whether there is a microchip, whether any rabies vaccinations are on file, and when the latest expires. Everything on this page branches off that answer.

Read the one checklist that applies to you, to the end. The traps are in the parenthetical clauses: the tick product that is specifically excluded, the second health certificate after fourteen days away, the ownership field that must name the legal owner, the vaccination that must not expire while you are gone.

Decide who does this if you cannot. A displaced household makes calls from somewhere else. The health certificate must be issued in Hawaii with a Hawaii address, and Checklist 3 treats listing a transport company as owner on the import form as fraud. Work out now who your named person is, and ask the Animal Quarantine Station what it will accept from someone acting for you.