Hazmat and Train Derailment Evacuation With Pets: The Distances Responders Actually Use

There is no fixed evacuation distance for a chemical release. When you are told to leave, go at once, with every animal in a closed carrier, in the direction the order names or crosswind and away from the spill, never straight downwind. Keep car windows and vents closed and the air conditioner and heater off while you are in the affected area. Remove any chemical from yourself before you touch an exposed animal, and call your veterinarian, Poison Control (800-222-1222) or 911 rather than treating anything yourself.

The alert is short. A train is off the tracks two streets over, or a tanker has rolled at the interchange, and you are being told to leave. Somewhere in the house are a dog who has never been in a carrier, two cats under the bed, and a bird whose cage does not fit in the back seat. This page covers the part nobody writes down: how far, which way, and what happens to an animal that has been outside in it.

This is not the shelter-in-place branch. If your authorities told you to stay in and seal a room, our chemical release shelter-in-place playbook covers it and our stay-or-go decision guide covers the choice. The only piece of that branch this page carries is a warning about the room, below. What follows assumes you are moving.

A federal pet protocol already exists

CDC publishes “Pets: Preparing for a Chemical Emergency”, and its overview opens: “Chemical emergencies can happen because of an accident such as a train derailment.” Its governing principle is to follow the same steps to protect your pet as you would for yourself. Its companion page, “Pets: What to Do During a Chemical Emergency”, covers the order of operations, a cleaning sequence, an eye-flush duration and the phone routes afterward. Both are dated June 10, 2026. CDC says its guide is mostly about dogs and cats; our horse and livestock evacuation basics covers the large-animal branch.

Ready.gov (FEMA’s Chemicals and Hazardous Materials Incidents page, last updated 04/24/2023) splits its protocol by the instruction you receive: told to evacuate, told to stay indoors, or outside when an incident occurs. It names pets in the stay-indoors branch. Its evacuate branch says to leave immediately when asked, to work out which areas are affected or where the chemical is coming from and get away, and to leave the building without passing through the contaminated area if possible. It adds: “If you can’t get out of the building or find clean air without passing through the affected area, move as far away as possible and shelter-in-place.” The instruction is not to evacuate at all costs. It is to get out if you can do so without walking through the release. With animals this matters more, because loading three carriers takes minutes.

Ready.gov also lists signs of a chemical release: difficulty breathing, eye irritation, loss of coordination, nausea, or burning in the nose, throat and lungs, and many dead insects or birds may indicate a release. It says that some toxic chemicals are odorless.

Nebraska Emergency Management Agency publishes a parallel page that names pets in the same branch. It adds one instruction the federal page does not: “If you have time, minimize contamination in the house by closing all windows, shutting all vents and turning off attic fans.” That is thirty seconds on the way out.

Do not carry the tornado room over

If your instruction is to stay in, follow your authorities. But do not carry over the room from a different hazard plan. Ready.gov’s before-an-incident list says to identify an above-ground shelter room with as few openings as possible. CDC says the safe room should also be at the highest point in the building and have a water source if possible. A basement or below-grade utility room is a good tornado answer and is not what these two pages say for a chemical release. If your plan stages a carrier, litter box and water in a basement, it needs a second location upstairs. This page gives no sealing procedure, and you should not build one from these two sentences. Our radiation shelter-in-place playbook is a different hazard with its own room logic.

Where those documents stop

CDC never mentions how far. Ready.gov never mentions how far. Nebraska gives a half-mile figure, but it sits in the block for a person caught outside on foot: “Stay upstream, uphill and upwind. In general, try to go at least a half mile (usually 8-10 city blocks) from the danger area.” That is a pedestrian rule of thumb, not an evacuation zone, and it should not be welded onto a rail incident.

None of the three says the distance depends on which chemical is involved, addresses an animal that has been outside in the release riding in a closed car with you, or says who pays. All three assume the instruction reaches you, which is a different problem covered in our guide to decoding evacuation levels. So the useful thing to add is the layer underneath: what responders’ own numbers look like, and what that means for a household with animals.

The distance question, and why nobody can answer it for you

The Emergency Response Guidebook (ERG) decides the initial numbers at a transportation incident, and the 2024 edition is the current one. Its scope, as served on NOAA’s CAMEO Chemicals datasheets: “The ERG recommendations are developed for use during the initial phase of transportation incidents; they are not intended for spills at facilities.” If a train derails, the ERG is the book. If the tank farm across the highway lets go, it is not, and the numbers below do not transfer.

Two zones, and only one is a circle

Of the initial isolation distance, the ERG says it defines the radius of a zone surrounding the spill in all directions, inside which protective clothing and respiratory protection are required. The protective action zone is not a circle: “For practical purposes, the protective action zone (i.e., the area in which people are at risk of harmful exposure) is a square.” The ERG adds: “Its length and width are the same as the downwind distance shown in Table 1.”

A downwind square is not a ring around the derailment or around your house. Where you are relative to the wind decides whether a given distance means anything to you. That is why the section on direction matters more than any figure.

One chemical, two containers, two answers

Chlorine (UN1017) is a real rail commodity and makes the cleanest example.

Read the scope note first. CAMEO states: “These distances are for spills where there is no fire involved.” Where there is fire, CAMEO states: “When a fire is involved, the ERG developers state that you should use EVACUATION value in the appropriate orange ERG Response Guide for the initial isolation distance.” The green table is then used to protect downwind for residual release. This is not academic here: the East Palestine response included a controlled burn, so the reader most likely to reach for these rows is one they do not govern on their own.

For a small spill (208 liters, or 55 US gallons, or less), ERG 2024 gives chlorine as: isolate 200 ft in all directions, then protect downwind 0.2 mi by day and 0.9 mi at night. For a large spill, Table 1 refers you to Table 3. The Table 3 row for a rail tank car reads: isolate 3000 ft in all directions, then protect downwind by day 6.0 mi in low wind (under 6 mph), 3.9 mi in moderate wind and 3.2 mi in high wind, and at night 7.0+ mi in low wind, 5.6 mi moderate and 4.1 mi high. The table’s footnote explains the plus sign: it means the distance can be larger in certain atmospheric conditions.

Same chemical: 0.2 miles downwind by day for a 55 gallon release, and a figure the guidebook will not close off at the top for a rail tank car on a low-wind night. Nothing you could memorize would get you close, because the answer was never about you. It was about the container, the hour and the wind.

The chemical everyone remembers has no table entry

Vinyl chloride (UN1086) was the chemical named in the East Palestine controlled release. In the ERG’s green section its entry says there are no initial isolation and protective action distances listed. That does not mean the material is harmless; the green table is built for materials toxic by inhalation. Vinyl chloride has an orange guide page instead, Guide 116, Gases - Flammable (Unstable), which gives three conditional figures: isolate a spill or leak for at least 100 meters (330 feet) in all directions; consider initial downwind evacuation for at least 800 meters (1/2 mile); and if a tank, rail tank car or highway tank is in a fire, isolate for 1600 meters (1 mile) in all directions and consider evacuating the same distance. A “1 mile” figure attached to this subject is a fire figure from one guide page.

The fire figures are not uniform either

ERG 2024 guide	Immediate precautionary isolation	Large-spill or downwind figure	Rail tank car in a fire (isolate and consider evacuating)
Guide 124, Gases - Toxic and/or Corrosive - Oxidizing (chlorine)	At least 100 meters (330 feet) in all directions	Refers you to Table 1	800 meters (1/2 mile) in all directions
Guide 125, Gases - Toxic and/or Corrosive	At least 100 meters (330 feet) in all directions	Table 1 for highlighted materials; otherwise increase the precautionary distance downwind	1600 meters (1 mile) in all directions
Guide 116, Gases - Flammable (Unstable) (vinyl chloride)	At least 100 meters (330 feet) in all directions	Consider initial downwind evacuation for at least 800 meters (1/2 mile)	1600 meters (1 mile) in all directions
Guide 128, Flammable Liquids (Water-Immiscible)	At least 50 meters (150 feet) in all directions	Consider initial downwind evacuation for at least 300 meters (1000 feet)	800 meters (1/2 mile) in all directions

There is no standard hazmat evacuation distance. When fire is involved, the two systems combine: use the orange guide’s evacuation value for the initial isolation distance, then the green table to protect downwind for residual release.

Four things that make any of those numbers bigger

The ERG’s background section lists multipliers, and they are not small.

• A catastrophic release doubles them. For the instantaneous release of an entire package’s contents, as from terrorism, sabotage or catastrophic failure, the distances should be doubled.
• Terrain concentrates a plume. If the vapor plume is channeled in a valley or between many tall buildings, protective action distances may be larger than shown, because there is less mixing with the atmosphere.
• Inversions and snow cover extend it, even by day. A daytime spill in a region with known strong temperature inversions or snow cover, or near sunset, may require a larger distance, and the guidebook says the nighttime distances may then be more appropriate.
• Heat extends it. If the liquid or outdoor temperature exceeds 30°C (86°F), the distance may be larger.

Underneath all of it is a statistical basis rather than a guarantee: the ERG says its distances came from modeling thousands of hypothetical releases and selecting the 90th percentile protective action distance for each chemical and category.

A number scoped to people

The ERG says that where available it chose toxicological guidelines from AEGL-2 or ERPG-2, which are human exposure guidelines. For materials without them it estimated guidelines from lethal concentration limits derived from animal studies, which is animal data used to protect people, not a value set to protect an animal. None of the ERG background material, CDC’s two pet pages, Ready.gov or Nebraska describes a figure as protective of a dog, cat or other companion animal. So no distance on this page is presented as safe for your animal.

What the real order looked like

EPA’s background paragraph says that at about 8:55 PM ET on February 3, 2023, a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, about a quarter-mile west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania state line, and that twenty of the affected cars contained hazardous materials, including vinyl chloride, ethylene glycol, ethylhexyl acrylate, butyl acrylate and isobutylene. The word “including” matters: the list is not exhaustive. Even knowing a train had come off the rails at the end of your street, you would not know which material governed the response, and the ERG has a different answer for each.

Three days later the zone was redrawn. The Ohio Governor’s office, on February 6, 2023, announced that after new modeling by the Ohio National Guard and the Department of Defense, the Ohio and Pennsylvania governors were ordering an immediate evacuation of a one-mile by two-mile area around East Palestine, crossing the state line. A rectangle set by that morning’s dispersion modeling, not a radius. The release described the zones by color: anyone remaining in the red affected area faced grave danger of death, and anyone in the yellow impacted area faced a high risk of severe injury, including skin burns and serious lung damage.

Two more points from that release matter for animals. It said residents with children who declined to evacuate might be subject to arrest, and it had no equivalent sentence about animals; our page on when one household member refuses to leave covers what that gap means for someone planning to stay behind with the pets. And it said it was unknown when residents could return. Plan boarding and food for an open-ended absence. CDC’s go-kit guidance assumes the same, listing “Enough food and water to last 2 weeks.” along with medicines to last two weeks.

Direction is the part you can work out in advance

You cannot pre-compute your distance. You can pre-compute your direction, and every source points the same way.

• ERG 2024, on the public inside the isolation zone: “Evacuate the general public in a direction perpendicular to wind direction (crosswind) and away from the spill.” It also says to expand the evacuated area downwind and crosswind to at least the recommended extent as additional help arrives.
• Ready.gov, to a person outside: find the fastest way to clean air and “Move away immediately, in a direction upwind of the source.”
• Nebraska: “Stay upstream, uphill and upwind.”
• CDC: “Stay upwind if possible.” and “Take any pets with you.”

All four describe a decision made during the incident by someone standing outside looking at a plume. That join is our reasoning: a household with three animals cannot make that decision at speed. Loading carriers takes minutes, and the route decision is the one thing you can move earlier, onto a calm afternoon, without knowing the chemical.

In practice: find the rail line, highway or fixed facility nearest you on a map. Find out which way the wind normally blows across it toward your house, which your local forecast office or a climate summary will show. Pick a route out that runs crosswind to that prevailing direction, and a second for when the wind is doing something else. That is not an agency protocol. It is what the ERG’s crosswind instruction implies for someone who has to load animals first.

The ERG also says to send evacuees to a definite place, by a specific route, far enough away that they will not have to relocate again if the wind shifts, and that even at the recommended distances people may not be completely safe from harm. With animals, a definite place means a destination that will take them, decided in advance. CDC’s preparation page says to plan where you might go and to look for pet-friendly hotels or motels along your routes, with another route in mind if the first is blocked. Our last-minute pet-friendly hotel checklist and guide to how far to evacuate with pets cover that half.

Ready.gov and Nebraska tell you to text SHELTER plus your ZIP code to 43362 to find the nearest public shelter. Neither says whether the shelter will take an animal, and CDC is blunt about why that matters: “Some shelters, such as those of the American Red Cross, take only service animals.” CDC adds that local emergency services may know of other shelters that take pets, and that local animal shelters or your veterinarian may offer advice. That is a referral, not an answer, and you would be making it with sirens going. Settle the destination in advance; our page on whether pet-friendly disaster shelters exist covers what opens and when.

The car, and the animal sitting in it

Two published facts sit next to each other here and nobody puts them together.

Published: the car gets sealed, and neither agency wants you to stay in it. Ready.gov: “If in a car, keep car windows and vents closed and shut off the air conditioner and heater.” Its next bullet: “Find the closest building to shelter-in-place.” Nebraska says nearly the same for a driver who must stay in a vehicle and leads with the same preference: “Stop and seek shelter in a permanent building.” ERG 2024 says what the car is worth: “Vehicles can offer some protection for a short period if the windows are closed and the ventilation systems are shut off.” It adds that vehicles are not nearly as effective as buildings for in-place protection.

Published: the animal comes with you, in a container. CDC’s evacuate list: “Put your pet in a pet carrier or crate.” And take the pet’s Ready to Go bag with a two-week supply of medications.

Published, on a different subject: an animal that has been outside in a release carries whatever settled on its coat, and a coat is not a sealed surface because the animal will groom it. The veterinary sourcing for that mechanism is on our page about decontaminating a cat after ash or floodwater, and washing floodwater off a dog covers the dog route. Neither is written for a chemical release.

The join is our own reasoning, not a published instruction. CDC’s two pet pages, Ready.gov, Nebraska and the ERG green-section material contain no instruction about a possibly contaminated animal inside a closed vehicle, and none telling a driver when it is safe to open the windows again. Given that gap, we conclude:

• The carrier is doing a second job. A hard carrier or crate is the only barrier between a contaminated coat and the seat, seat belts, door handles and your hands. This scenario argues for the closed container over a sling or loose harness.
• The sealed car is a countdown for the animal too. The ERG’s “short period” is about chemical protection. With ventilation off, a closed car also heats up, and an animal in a carrier is in a smaller volume of stiller air than you. Treat the sealed-car window as short for two reasons, not one.
• Cleaning is not a chore for the destination. Once you are out and near clean water, washing ends the shared-air problem. CDC puts “Get away” before “Get it off” for this reason.
• Do not improvise ventilation inside the affected area. The published instruction is windows and vents closed while you are in it. Ventilate once you have reached somewhere authorities have said is clear.

None of these is an agency instruction. If an agency publishes something that contradicts them, follow the agency.

Getting it off: what CDC publishes

CDC’s second page is the only prospective, pet-specific cleaning sequence in the sources cited here. Its order-of-operations line matters most: “Remove any chemical from yourself first.” Then, CDC says, you can do the same for your pet. CDC also notes you may need to repeat the steps if you were exposed to more chemical while cleaning. Washing a contaminated animal is itself an exposure, which is why the gloves and face covering come first.

As CDC describes it, the sequence is: put on a mask and waterproof gloves (or cloth over your face and plastic bags over your hands if you have none); blot the pet’s face, body and paws with a moist wipe, wet cloth or damp paper towel, without rubbing; wash with lukewarm water and mild skin soap, if available, for at least 2-3 minutes, from head to tail, keeping water out of the eyes, nose and mouth; flush the eyes for 10-15 minutes with lukewarm water if they are red or the pet is rubbing them; then dry the pet, which helps remove leftover chemical. CDC prints one emphasis of its own: “Do not scrub!” Follow CDC’s page itself for the steps, not this summary.

Three details are easy to skim past. The direction is head to tail, not the back-to-front way many people wash a dog. Blotting and washing, not rubbing and scrubbing, are about not working material further into coat and skin. And CDC names lukewarm water and mild skin soap and stops there. This page will not extend that list, name a product, give a dilution, or say what to do without soap and water, because none of the sources publishes an answer and a wrong guess could burn an animal.

After the sequence, CDC says to put used items in a plastic bag while wearing gloves, close it, put it in a second bag, and keep the bags in a closed container where they will not be opened by accident. Not the household trash. Our page on what to discard or wash after a flood or fire covers wider gear, though it is written for different contaminants.

Then make the calls. CDC routes you to the Poison Control Center at 800-222-1222, to 911, or to the nearest hospital if you had to clean yourself or your pet. For the animal, CDC says a pet you had to clean may need a veterinary check, once the emergency is over and it is safe, and that “Veterinarians are the best choice to treat a pet once the chemical emergency is over or if you have evacuated.” That is also the boundary of this page. There is no veterinarian on this site, so we do not describe symptoms to watch, name a treatment, give a dose or explain how to manage an exposure at home. Our guide to finding veterinary care mid-evacuation covers reaching one when your clinic is inside the closed zone.

CDC also warns that pain and fear can make animals bite, scratch or do things they normally would not. Touch your pet slowly and gently. An animal that has been through a release, a siren and a car ride is not the animal you live with.

What goes on the carrier before anyone else touches it

CDC says to get a carrier or crate, train your pet to travel and sleep in it, and write your name, your pet’s name, your address and your telephone number on it. Four fields, on the carrier, in advance. Our crate and kennel ID card checklist covers a durable version.

No source cited here addresses labeling a carrier for a chemical decontamination handoff. Our reasoning, from CDC’s four fields plus the double-bagging instruction: write the fields directly on the carrier in permanent marker, since a card can be removed with the bedding and the carrier cannot, and add them inside as well. That extends CDC’s instruction and is not CDC’s instruction.

CDC’s door sticker is the other half, for animals still in the house: it lets first responders know if pets are in the house, and CDC says to write EVACUATED on it if you have left. Our page on making sure firefighters know pets are inside covers the sticker.

What the fire department knows that you do not

This explains why the instruction you get can change twice in an hour. Under 49 CFR 174.28, each railroad must keep electronic consist information off the train and give it to authorized federal, state and local first responders, emergency response officials and law enforcement along the train route. On an incident, the railroad must immediately notify the primary Public Safety Answering Point, the local 911 center, and forward the consist. The industry also runs AskRail, which describes itself as a safety tool for first responders and recommends first responders register with a government or firehouse email address.

So within minutes the incident commander can know which car holds what. You cannot, and there is no public equivalent. That asymmetry is the design. The instruction you get is the output of information you do not have, and the right response is to comply quickly rather than evaluate it. The time you have is better spent on carriers.

Who pays, told briefly

A claim circulates that lodging after a rail incident is arranged through the railroad’s claims line rather than the county. That cannot be established as a general rule, and in the one documented incident it was not either/or.

After East Palestine, Norfolk Southern ran a Family Assistance Center. Its page says claims forms are available in person there and lists what to bring, including proof of residency within the evacuation zone at the time of the derailment (such as a utility bill) and receipts for any expenses incurred while evacuated. That is a company process for one incident, gated on where you lived. At the same time, the Ohio Governor’s February 6, 2023 release routed the evacuation itself through government, publishing county and state phone numbers for help evacuating and for information on the orders. Those were incident-specific 2023 numbers and are deliberately not reprinted here.

No source cited here publishes a standing rule about who pays for a boarding kennel, pet deposit or hotel pet fee. A page that tells you confidently which desk pays is generalizing from one arrangement. So:

• Keep every receipt from the moment you leave: boarding, lodging, pet deposits, food bought on the road, veterinary visits.
• Photograph them the day you get them.
• Write down the date you were displaced and the address you were displaced from.
• Assemble the file first and find out who reimburses later.

Federal disaster assistance for animals is a separate question; our page on what FEMA publishes about pet expenses covers its limits. Getting back into a closed zone is a third, covered in re-entry access to reach a pet.

The pre-planning that exists, and what it will not tell you

Two records get recommended for this scenario, and a third is closer to your question. Neither of the first two does what is usually said.

EPCRA Tier II: public, and about buildings rather than trains

Ready.gov says many communities have Local Emergency Planning Committees (LEPCs) that collect information about chemicals and hazardous materials in the community and plan for accidents, and that these materials are available to the public upon request. EPA says the information facilities submit must be made available to the public.

The mechanism is written down. Under 40 CFR 370.61, any person may request Tier II information for a specific facility by writing to the SERC (State Emergency Response Commission) or the LEPC. If they hold it, they must give it to you. If not, they must fetch it from the facility when the request is for hazardous chemicals in amounts greater than 10,000 pounds stored at the facility at any time in the previous calendar year (the other trigger is a request from a state or local official, which you are not). Below that threshold the SERC or LEPC may request it from the facility when your request includes a general statement of need. May, not must, so write the statement into your letter. Either way, the rule sets a 45-day response deadline.

Under 40 CFR 370.63 the SERC or LEPC must make available what they obtained and what they hold, except confidential location information. Under 370.64(b) a facility may ask that the location of a specific chemical be withheld from the public, but it may not withhold it from the SERC, the LEPC or the local fire department. EPA’s description of the form confirms it asks whether the owner elects to withhold location information. So you may get the chemical and amount without the spot on the site; the fire department gets both.

The entry point is a directory: EPA maintains a state-by-state list of SERC contacts. Ask them which LEPC covers your address. One number appears in two different rules: the 10,000 pounds in 370.61 is a trigger for whether the SERC or LEPC must fetch information it does not hold, while the 10,000 pounds in EPA’s reporting list is a separate rule about which facilities must file at all. Extremely hazardous substances have much lower thresholds.

The limit. Tier II is a fixed-facility inventory. It says nothing about what is riding through your town tonight. If your nearest hazard is a rail line, it is not the record you want. It does help with what is stored at a named site, alongside the county hazard mitigation plan described in our page on building your county hazard list.

The other LEPC record: routes for things in motion

EPCRA also requires every committee to write an emergency response plan for its district. Under 42 U.S.C. 11003(c)(1), the plan must include identification of facilities, “identification of routes likely to be used for the transportation of substances on the list of extremely hazardous substances”, and identification of additional facilities at risk due to their proximity, such as hospitals or natural gas facilities. Under 42 U.S.C. 11044(a), each emergency response plan must be made available to the general public during normal working hours at the designated locations, and each committee must annually publish a notice in local newspapers that the plans, safety data sheets and inventory forms have been submitted.

The limits matter. The routes are for extremely hazardous substances, a specific list at 40 CFR part 355 Appendix A, not hazardous materials generally. Chlorine is on it, with a threshold planning quantity of 100 pounds. Vinyl chloride is not. A plan that identifies corridors is not a record of what is on a train tonight, and how much route detail a committee puts in its public copy is local. Still, add one sentence to your Tier II letter: ask to review the district’s emergency response plan while you are there.

The rail rule, described accurately

Under 49 CFR 174.312, before operating high-hazard flammable trains a railroad must give each SERC, Tribal Emergency Response Commission or other appropriate state-delegated agency information that includes a reasonable estimate of the number of such trains it expects each week through each county, and the routes. Three things constrain it.

• One kind of train. 49 CFR 171.8 defines a high-hazard flammable train as a single train carrying 20 or more loaded tank cars of a Class 3 flammable liquid in a continuous block, or 35 or more throughout the train consist. Per CAMEO, chlorine is hazard class 2.3 (poisonous gas) and vinyl chloride is 2.1 (flammable gas), so a train does not become a high-hazard flammable train by carrying either. Whether any real train met the count depends on its consist, which you cannot see.
• It stops at the state. The state agency shall distribute the information to appropriate local authorities at their request. Residents are not in the chain.
• It anticipates being withheld. If a railroad believes disclosure includes security-sensitive or proprietary information exempt from public disclosure, it should indicate that in the notification.

Bills to broaden commodity-flow reporting are not law; what is in force is the paragraph above.

Your hazmat and derailment evacuation checklist

• Follow the instruction and go now. Ready.gov: “If asked to evacuate, do so immediately.” Do not stop to work out a distance. The people issuing the order have the train consist and you do not.
• If you cannot get out without going through it, do not go through it. Ready.gov’s branch: move as far away as possible and shelter in place.
• Move upwind or crosswind, not downwind. CDC says stay upwind if possible, and the ERG says move the public perpendicular to the wind and away from the spill.
• Take every animal, in carriers, not arms. CDC says never to leave a pet chained outdoors. Our triage page on which animal goes first is one to read before you need it.
• Windows up, vents closed, air conditioning and heater off while you are in the affected area. Both agencies then tell you to get into a building if you can. The car buys some protection for a short period.
• Take the two-week supplies. CDC’s go kit is built on two weeks of food, water and medicines. Our DIY go-bag checklist is the build.
• If you have thirty seconds, close all windows, shut all vents and turn off attic fans (Nebraska). Then leave.
• Yourself first, then the animal. Remove any chemical from yourself first, per CDC.
• Clean an exposed animal only as CDC’s page describes. Lukewarm water and mild skin soap, no scrubbing, nothing stronger on an animal on the strength of a web page.
• Double-bag what you used and keep it out of the household trash, in a closed container.
• Call. Poison Control at 800-222-1222 and 911 for people, and your veterinarian for the animal once it is safe. Do not decide from a web page that an animal that seems fine is fine.
• Keep and photograph every receipt.
• Do not assume a short absence. The Ohio order said it was unknown when residents could return.
• Do not use a below-grade room if you end up sheltering. Ready.gov says above-ground; CDC says the highest point in the building.

The version you do on a quiet afternoon

Find the hazard, then the wind. Locate the rail line, interstate or fixed facility closest to you, find which way the wind normally crosses it toward your house, and sketch one route out that runs crosswind and a second for the other case. This extends the ERG’s crosswind instruction and is ours, not an agency’s. It is the highest-value item here because it is the one decision the incident will not make for you.

Write the four fields on the carrier, per CDC, in permanent marker, on every carrier in the house, including the one you only use for vet visits.

Ask your LEPC two questions. Use EPA’s SERC directory to find your state’s commission, ask who the LEPC is for your address, then ask what facilities near you file Tier II and whether you can review the district’s emergency response plan. Neither answer lists what is on a train tonight. Do it in a year when nothing is happening.

Settle the destination. CDC’s instruction is to look for pet-friendly hotels or motels along your routes and to have another route in mind. It also names the buddy system: “Develop a buddy system with a trusted neighbor.” Somebody who can get your animals out if the order lands while you are at work is worth more than any item on any list; our page on an evacuation order arriving while you are at work covers what that arrangement needs.

And for return: Ready.gov says not to leave the safety of a shelter to go outdoors, including to help others, until authorities say it is safe. Nebraska adds returning home only when authorities say it is safe, then opening windows and vents and turning on fans. Our return-home page for pet households covers the rest of that day.

The animals this page does not cover well

Large animals. CDC’s pages are mostly about dogs and cats; our horse and livestock evacuation basics is the large-animal page. After East Palestine, the advisory route for these animals ran through state agriculture. Pennsylvania’s Department of Agriculture said on February 17, 2023 that its veterinarians and Pennsylvania Animal Health Commission partners directly advised livestock and poultry owners and private veterinarians within 10 kilometers of the derailment on safely housing, feeding and caring for animals. That is the perimeter one agency chose for one incident, not a planning distance for yours. The same statement reported two reports from private veterinarians treating horses affected by smoke immediately after the controlled burn, and told poultry, livestock and pet owners to contact their private veterinarians about unusual respiratory issues or decreases in feeding, or egg or milk production.

Birds, reptiles, fish and small mammals. CDC points these away from its own pages, and nothing cited here gives a chemical-emergency instruction for a bird’s respiratory sensitivity, a reptile enclosure or a tank. Do not reason across from a dog’s bath to a parrot’s cage; the exposure routes differ. Ask the exotics practice that sees your animal, and stage the answer before you need it.

Where to go next

This page is the hazmat spoke of our pet emergency playbooks hub and covers one branch: you have been told to leave, and a chemical is involved.

• Told to stay in? The chemical release shelter-in-place playbook covers the room, sealing and how long an animal can be in it. Do not build a sealing procedure from the two sentences above.
• Animal exposed and you want the mechanism? Decontaminating a cat after ash or floodwater and washing floodwater off a dog document the grooming route; neither is written for a chemical release.
• Radiological rather than chemical? Sheltering in place with pets in a radiation emergency has different room logic.
• Want to know what could happen where you live? Building your county hazard list is the method, and a Tier II request is the add-on.

The one thing that pays off most takes an afternoon. Find the rail line or plant nearest you, find the prevailing wind across it, and write down one route out that does not run downwind. Tape it inside the cupboard where the carriers live. During an incident you will not be able to look up a chemical, a container or a table, and you will not need to: the only decision left will be which way to turn at the end of the street.