Pet Gear After a Flood or Fire: What to Throw Away, What to Wash, and Who Published Each Rule

Keep and clean hard, nonporous gear: crates, wire pens, stainless and ceramic bowls, hard plastic toys, metal tags. Throw away porous gear that cannot be cleaned and dried completely within 24 to 48 hours, which in practice means stuffed beds, padded harnesses, soft carriers after a flood, and rope or plush toys. Throw away anything broken, torn, cracked or chewed first. When in doubt, throw it out. For fire, ash is a surface deposit rather than an immersion, so lightly soiled soft items have a path they do not have after a flood.

The gear survived, and nothing is obviously destroyed. The crate looks almost normal, the stainless bowls have a tide line on them, and the bed is heavy, cold and smells like something you cannot name. This page is contamination triage on gear that made it through a flood or fire, where the item is intact and the question is what is now in it. The calendar version of the question, refreshing good gear on a clock, lives in the pet emergency kit rotation checklist. Bowls belong here because a bowl is the one piece of equipment that puts whatever the disaster left behind directly into the animal’s mouth.

Two boundaries decide half of what people search for. Food is not on this page. Whether kibble, cans, treats and refrigerated food are salvageable has its own agency, rules and container definitions, and the page on whether pet food is safe after a flood or a power outage works them through with FDA quoted directly. Washing the animal itself is not on this page either. It has its own sources and steps in decontaminating a pet after floodwater or ash. This page covers the gear.

What Is Published, and How Far to Trust Each Row

There is no agency list of pet gear to keep or discard after a disaster, and no pet-specific table for any of it. What exists is a consistent body of guidance about materials, written by federal agencies and state health departments for household possessions, plus a few pet-specific sentences from a county health department, a poison control center and a national animal-response body. The table below puts your gear into the material classes those documents already rule on and names which document ruled on which class.

A row that says an agency puts this material in its top tier stands on published text. A row that says “our call” is reasoning from a published rule to an object the rule does not name, and it says so in the row. Nobody publishes a porosity threshold, an absorption figure or a measurement you can take at home. The published test is operational: can the item be cleaned, and can it be dried all the way through, in time. If not, it goes. When you cannot tell, the Minnesota Department of Health has a heading for that: “When in doubt, throw it out!” Iowa’s Department of Health and Human Services closes its flood sheet with “If in DOUBT, throw it OUT!”

Before You Touch Any of It

Sorting is cleanup, and cleanup has its own exposure. Two document families set the rules, with different lists.

Some people should not do this work. The federal Homeowner’s and Renter’s Guide to Mold Cleanup After Disasters, published on epa.gov and developed by EPA, HUD, FEMA, NIH and CDC, says people with breathing problems such as asthma or weakened immune systems should stay away from moldy sites, and children should not take part in disaster cleanup. That is an instruction to be somewhere else, not to wear better equipment.

For fire, EPA’s ash page gives a separate list and gates it on authorities saying it is safe to return. People with heart or lung disease, older adults and pregnant women should not participate in ash cleanup, and children should not be near ash or ash-contaminated sites until affected areas are cleaned. Two documents, two lists, two hazards. Do not merge them.

What to wear is also two lists. For a mold or flood site, the mold guide says to wear at least an N-95 respirator and non-latex, vinyl, nitrile or rubber gloves, and not to touch mold or moldy items with bare hands. Its goggle advice is the one people get wrong: wear goggles that give complete eye protection and keep out dust and small particles, because safety glasses or goggles with open vent holes will not protect you against dust and small particles. For an ash site, EPA lists work gloves, long sleeves, long pants, socks, sturdy thick-soled shoes, goggles and head coverings, plus a NIOSH Approved respirator marked N95 or P100. It adds that surgical masks and one-strap dust masks will not protect your lungs because they are not designed to seal tightly to the face, and that people with heart or lung disease should talk to a health provider before using a respirator or working around ash.

The respirator is for you. Los Angeles County Public Health says: “Do not place an N95 respirator on your pet.” It explains that the elastic straps can choke or strangle pets and the mask material can block breathing through the nose or panting.

Skin and clothes. EPA says to wash ash off as soon as you can if it gets on your skin, in your eyes or in your mouth, and notes that contact with wet ash can cause chemical burns or skin irritation. The mold guide says to shower and change your clothes after leaving a mold site; that sentence is written about mold, and it is not extended here to ash or floodwater generally.

Do not mix cleaning products. The mold guide says do not mix bleach and ammonia, because it can create toxic vapors. EPA’s Brief Guide to Mold, Moisture and Your Home words it separately: never mix chlorine bleach solution with other cleaning solutions or detergents that contain ammonia, because toxic fumes could be produced. The Brief Guide also says a biocide such as chlorine bleach is not recommended as a routine practice during mold cleanup, with professional judgment as the exception, for example when immune-compromised people are present. If you do use disinfectants, ventilate and exhaust the air outdoors. Dead mold may still cause allergic reactions, so it must be removed, not just killed, and removal is exactly what a porous item does not let you verify.

If someone is exposed. For a person, America’s Poison Centers publishes the Poison Help line at 1-800-222-1222, and says its member centers give all Americans expert advice 24/7/365 at no cost. For an animal, ASPCA Animal Poison Control publishes (888) 426-4435, available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and says a consultation fee may apply. The two numbers are not interchangeable.

The Four Tests That Decide Every Row

Every call in the table comes from one of four published tests. Knowing which one is working lets you extend the table to an item it does not list.

Test one: EPA’s three tiers

The most useful document here is a graphic titled “What Can I Keep?”, which EPA’s Things to Keep and Throw Away page under Flooded Homes links to, published as an image and a PDF. The graphic sorts household possessions into three tiers, using its own labels:

• “Keep it & Clean it”: Metal Furniture, China Dishware Ceramics, Silverware & Kitchen Utensils, Plastic Furniture, Jewelry and Glass.
• “It’s a Maybe”: Photos & Books, Bedding & Blankets, Rugs, Solid Wood Furniture, Clothing, and Appliances & Electronic Devices.
• “Best to Remove It”: Mattresses, Leather Furniture, Medicine, Cloth Upholstered Furniture, Cushions & Pillows and Wood Veneer Furniture.

Plastic, ceramics, metal and glass are in the top tier by name. Textiles and bedding are an explicit maybe. Cushions, upholstery and mattresses, which is what a pet bed is made of, are in the bottom tier. EPA is not writing about pet gear. It is writing about the exact materials pet gear is made of.

Test two: the porous rule and its reason

The Minnesota Department of Health’s flood cleanup page says to take out and throw away porous items that touched flood water or have visible mold growth. Its examples are wallboard, wallpaper, insulation, carpeting, seat cushions, mattresses and pressed wood furniture. The reason is attached: “They are difficult to clean and dry and can have mold and other hazards on the inside and backside.” That clause is the mechanism. Porous things are not dirtier; the contamination goes where you cannot reach or inspect it, and the drying you can verify is on the outside.

EPA’s Mold Cleanup in Your Home page says the same about other examples: absorbent or porous materials such as ceiling tiles and carpet may have to be thrown away if they become moldy, because mold can grow on or fill the empty spaces and crevices, so it may be difficult or impossible to remove completely.

Minnesota gives the matching rule for hard items: check hard materials that are nonporous or semi-porous to see if they are structurally sound. These include concrete, countertops, metal, glass, tile, solid wood and appliances. Scrub and clean with soap and safe water. The operative words are structurally sound: a hard item is a keeper only if it is not cracked. Minnesota’s next steps are to scrub and rinse with safe water, then apply diluted bleach (1 cup household bleach per 5 gallons of water, or 1 cup per 1 gallon if there was mold growth), let it sit for about 30 minutes and rinse again. Those are Minnesota’s figures for building surfaces. They show that a published sequence exists and where it lives; they are not for a food bowl or a crate, and the ASPCA condition below still applies to anything the animal comes back around.

Test three: the clock

The mold guide’s step eight says: “Throw away anything that was wet with flood water and can’t be cleaned and dried completely within 24 to 48 hours.” The window is a property of the item, not the disaster: can this thing be cleaned and dried completely inside it. The same step carries a carve-out: readers with precious items they want to preserve are pointed to guidelines from the Smithsonian Institute. A collar with a lost animal’s name on it can be a precious item, and the guide routes that to a preservation authority, not a home method. The guide also sets the premise earlier: if you could not dry your home, including furniture and other items, within 24 to 48 hours, assume you have mold growth.

This clock belongs to flood water and mold. It is not a food rule and not a chemical rule.

Test four: is it broken

This test resolves more pet gear than the others, because gear takes abuse before any disaster. Iowa’s sheet opens with it as rule one: items that are “broken, have been torn, splintered, cracked, dented, etc. should be thrown away immediately and replaced”. A chewed carrier zip, a frayed harness strap, a crazed ceramic bowl and a crate with a cracked latch all fail rule one before the material question comes up.

Iowa splits the rest three ways. Small absorbent items, such as bedding, clothing and stuffed animals, get a wash procedure. Large absorbent items, such as patio upholstered furniture, mattresses and wall-to-wall carpeting, must be thrown away. Solid items that do not absorb water, such as concrete, tile or vinyl flooring, plastic patio furniture, plastic toys and picture frames, can be cleaned with a mild household detergent solution. Iowa names plastic toys in the solid class, the closest any of these documents comes to naming a pet item.

Iowa’s rule five is why this page can point at a disinfecting procedure without owning a number. It says to prepare a bleach solution following the manufacturer’s label instructions, to make a mild bleach and water solution to disinfect solid items after cleaning, and to put small objects into the solution for one minute, remove them and let them air dry. The strength comes from the label on the bottle in your hand, not a figure typed on a website.

The Table

Each disposition names the document it rests on. A row marked “our call” is reasoning from a published rule to an item the source does not name. Nothing in the table certifies that an item is clean, decontaminated or safe. The documents say an item can be cleaned, can be safely cleaned, or, once diluted and rinsed, can be safely used around the animal again. That is permission to do the action, not proof that the result is sterile, and no document describes a pet item as decontaminated or certified safe after a home cleaning.

Item	Flood water	Fire, smoke and ash	What the call rests on
Nylon or polyester harness, flat webbing, no padding	Wash, unless torn or frayed	Wash	Iowa’s rule one sends a torn item to the bin. Iowa’s wash procedure covers small absorbent items including clothing. EPA puts Clothing in “It’s a Maybe”. Our call to read flat webbing as clothing rather than cushion.
Harness or vest with foam padding, or a padded collar	Discard is the safer call	Wash the shell if the padding is removable, otherwise discard	Our call, resting on Minnesota’s porous rule and its reason, plus EPA placing Cushions & Pillows in “Best to Remove It”. No source names a padded harness.
Leash, flat webbing or rope	Wash the webbing; discard rope	Wash the webbing; discard rope	Iowa’s small-absorbent wash procedure for webbing. Rope is our call, on Minnesota’s inside-you-cannot-inspect reasoning. NASAAEP’s position on worn items, below, is stricter.
Collar with metal hardware	Wash, or replace and keep the tags	Wash	NASAAEP says a collar might be difficult to clean, but tags might be more readily cleaned and returned.
Hard plastic or wire crate	Keep and clean, if structurally sound	Keep and clean	EPA puts Plastic Furniture and Metal Furniture in “Keep it & Clean it”. Minnesota says to check hard materials for structural soundness, then scrub and clean with soap and safe water.
Soft-sided carrier with padded base and mesh	Discard is the safer call	Clean if lightly soiled, otherwise discard	Our call for flood, on EPA’s “Best to Remove It” placement of Cloth Upholstered Furniture and Cushions & Pillows. For ash, EPA says lightly soiled upholstered furniture may be able to be cleaned.
Crate pad, pet bed, blanket	Discard the stuffed bed. Launder a flat blanket or a removable cover	Launder, and clean it before the animal uses it	EPA: Cushions & Pillows and Mattresses are “Best to Remove It”; Bedding & Blankets is “It’s a Maybe”. Iowa: large absorbent items must be thrown away. For fire, Los Angeles County says to clean bedding before the pet uses it.
Ceramic bowl	Keep, wash and sanitize, if not cracked or crazed	Clean before use	FDA names ceramic dishes in its wash-and-sanitize instruction. EPA puts China Dishware Ceramics in “Keep it & Clean it”. Iowa’s rule one bins a cracked one.
Stainless steel bowl	Keep, wash and sanitize	Clean before use	FDA names metal pans and utensils. EPA puts Metal Furniture and Silverware & Kitchen Utensils in “Keep it & Clean it”.
Plastic bowl	Keep and clean if sound; discard if scratched, crazed or chewed	Clean before use	EPA puts Plastic Furniture in “Keep it & Clean it” and Iowa puts plastic in its solid class. The word plastic does not appear on FDA’s flood page. The scratched-bowl exclusion is our call under Iowa’s rule one.
Hard rubber or hard plastic toy	Keep and clean if not chewed through	Clean before the animal uses it	Iowa names plastic toys in the solid class that can be cleaned with mild household detergent. Los Angeles County says to clean toys before your pet uses them.
Plush, rope or fabric toy	Discard	Launder if it is washable, otherwise discard	Iowa puts stuffed animals in the small-absorbent wash group, but its rule one bins anything torn, and most used plush toys are. Our call to weight rule one over the wash route, on the chewing hazard.
Litter box, plastic	Keep and clean if sound	Clean before use	EPA’s graphic and Iowa’s solid class both cover hard plastic. Our call to apply them to a litter pan, which no source names.
Litter, in the bag or in the box	Discard	Discard if exposed to smoke, heat or fire	Our call for flood, from Minnesota’s porous rule; litter is absorbent by design and no source names it. For fire, Los Angeles County publishes a food rule, not a litter rule, so the discard call is ours.
Unopened all-metal cans and retort pouches	FDA publishes a reconditioning procedure; see below	Discard if exposed to smoke, heat or fire	FDA for flood. Los Angeles County says food exposed to smoke, heat or fire should be discarded.
Bagged kibble, treats, chews, cardboard-boxed food	Discard	Discard if exposed to smoke, heat or fire	FDA’s not-waterproof definition and its cardboard rule; see the food section below and the separate food page.
Medications and supplements	Discard	Discard	EPA puts Medicine in “Best to Remove It”. Replacement is a veterinary conversation, not a cleaning one.
Paper records, vaccination certificates	Photograph or copy, then treat the paper as a maybe	Photograph or copy	EPA puts Photos & Books in “It’s a Maybe”. NASAAEP says items that cannot be decontaminated may need to be replaced, photographed or copied.

Why the Bed Is the Hardest Row and the Bowl the Easiest

The bed. A stuffed pet bed is a cushion inside a cover. EPA’s graphic sorts those two components into different tiers, Bedding & Blankets as a maybe and Cushions & Pillows as best removed. That is not inconsistency: it sorts by whether the inside of the object can be reached. Minnesota states it as a mechanism, naming seat cushions and mattresses among the porous items to throw away. Iowa is flatter about the large version. So the honest disposition for a flood-soaked stuffed bed is discard, and for a zip-off cover it is launder. Neither is a rule anyone published about pet beds. Both are published rules about the materials, applied to the object. If the bed is genuinely irreplaceable, the mold guide’s route to Smithsonian preservation guidance is a real option.

The bowl. The bowl is easy because it is the one pet item that is also a household item agencies already write rules about. FDA’s flood page says to thoroughly wash metal pans, ceramic dishes and utensils (including can openers) with soap and water, using hot water if available. Then rinse and sanitize them by boiling in clean water or immersing them for 15 minutes in a solution of 1 tablespoon of unscented household (5.25% concentration) liquid bleach per gallon of water. Those numbers are FDA’s, for dishes, written for human food. Do not round them, convert them or carry them to anything that is not a dish. FDA’s printable version, dated January 2023, words the strength differently, so read the numbers off whichever FDA page you have open, not from a summary. The pet food page sets the two versions side by side.

FDA’s sentence names metal pans, ceramic dishes and utensils. The word plastic does not appear on that page. That is FDA not addressing plastic, not ruling against it, and the sources that do address it are EPA’s graphic and Iowa’s solid-items class.

One more condition applies to any bowl you bleach, from a different organization for a different reason. ASPCA says diluted bleach can be safely used on pet toys and kennels, as long as it is diluted, thoroughly rinsed and the bleach odor has dissipated before the pet is back around the items. FDA is the authority on the dish. ASPCA is the authority on when the animal comes back to it.

Bleach, Laundry and Cleaning Products

More people get hurt by cleaning products than by contamination, so read this section through.

ASPCA’s Poisonous Household Products page opens its cleaning-products section with a sentence often quoted as reassurance: “Most cleaning products are safe to use around dogs and cats as long as they are used per labeled directions.” The condition is the content. A bleach solution mixed to a strength you invented, applied to an object the label does not contemplate, is outside it. The next sentence says to obtain veterinary advice when using cleaning products around birds, which are extremely sensitive to the fumes.

On bleach itself, ASPCA says ingestion of undiluted bleach can cause injury to the mouth and esophagus, especially at high concentration or high pH, and that diluted bleach can be used on pet toys and kennels under three conditions: diluted, thoroughly rinsed, and the odor dissipated before the animal is back around the items. All three apply, and ASPCA does not publish a ratio.

Two more entries from the same page matter to whoever is washing a flood-soaked bed cover. Most laundry dryer sheets, especially unused ones, contain cationic detergents that can cause severe chemical burns and ulcers to the mouth, esophagus and stomach, and the sheets can cause a foreign body obstruction that can be a medical emergency. Most fabric softeners also contain cationic detergents with the same burn risk. Keep both out of the pet laundry.

The washing instruction with numbers comes from Iowa, and it is household laundry guidance, not pet guidance. For small items soaked by flood water that will absorb water, Iowa says to soak in cold water first to remove mud and filth and not to pre-soak in the washer. Then use hot water and detergent without overloading the machine, and add 1 cup of liquid chlorine bleach to the wash water before adding items (½ cup for front-loading washers). Finish by tumble-drying or hanging items in the sun. Those are Iowa’s numbers for Iowa’s scope, and the ASPCA condition still applies before anything goes back on the animal.

The rule that outranks all of it: do not mix bleach and ammonia. If you want to know which products in your house contain ammonia, read the labels in front of you. No source here publishes that inventory.

Gear the Animal Was Wearing

The collar, harness and leash the animal wore during the event are a separate category, and one document treats them as such. NASAAEP’s 2023 Decontamination best practices, produced under a USDA APHIS Animal Care cooperative agreement with the University of Kentucky, says some items may be decontaminated and returned to the owner. A collar might be difficult to clean, but tags might be more readily cleaned and returned. Items that cannot be decontaminated may need to be replaced, photographed or copied, depending on the circumstances and the importance of the item.

That is the most useful disposition sentence in this literature because it is the only one written about pet accessories by name, and it names the fallback. If a collar has to go, photograph it with the tags legible first, and get the microchip and rabies tag numbers into your records. The waterproof document kit page covers where those numbers should live, and the crate and kennel emergency ID card carries them when the collar does not.

NASAAEP’s Appendix F goes further, with a caveat on how to read it. Its sample standard operating procedure was provided by a state radiological incident planning work group, is a template for jurisdictions to adapt, says not all statements will apply everywhere, and is written for a fictional nuclear generating station. It is a responder corridor, not a homeowner’s bathroom. Inside it, leashes, collars and other worn items are removed and placed in a contaminated-items container. They may not be able to be decontaminated and may not be returned to the owner, and an item that cannot be decontaminated, or that time does not allow decontaminating, is disposed of with other contaminated waste. The same appendix says only trained personnel should attempt to decontaminate any animal, and where owners are involved it describes supervision and protective equipment. Read it as the professional answer to your question: people who do this for a living treat worn accessories as probable waste. Its equipment list also has a bucket for contaminated collars, leashes and used brushes, which can also be used to decontaminate metal items that will be reused. Metal gets reused. The webbing goes in the bag.

None of this is a procedure for washing the animal itself. That is a different job with different sources, and it is set out in decontaminating a pet after floodwater or ash.

Cans, Bowls and the Line Between Them

FDA’s flood guidance is the authority on containers, and it matters here for one reason: the can sits next to the bowl, and people apply the wrong rule to the wrong object.

FDA says not to eat any food that may have come into contact with flood water, and to discard food and beverages not in a waterproof container if there is any chance of contact. Waterproof containers are undamaged, commercially prepared foods in all-metal cans and retort pouches. Containers with screw caps, snap lids, pull tops and crimped caps are not waterproof. Cardboard juice, milk and baby formula boxes, and home canned foods, go too, because they cannot be effectively cleaned and sanitized.

A pop-top pet food can is a pull top, which puts it on the not-waterproof list, and pop-top cans are what preparedness lists tell people to pack. FDA’s reconditioning procedure for undamaged all-metal cans and retort pouches (remove labels, brush off silt, wash, rinse, sanitize by boiling for two minutes or by bleach solution, air dry for a minimum of 1 hour, relabel, and use the food soon) does not extend to a nylon harness, soft carrier, bed, collar, toy or leash. Minnesota puts the same boundary in one sentence: discard soft packaging and screw-top glass bottles that may have touched floodwater, though commercially canned goods in metal cans or rigid plastic can sometimes be saved.

Bagged kibble, boxed treats and chews are the case people most want an exception for. FDA’s page is human-food guidance that never uses the words pet food, and it discards cardboard because it cannot be effectively cleaned and sanitized. A paper or woven feed bag is at least as absorbent, so we treat it the same way. That comparison is our reasoning, not an FDA finding; the full argument is on the pet food page.

Fire, Smoke and Ash

The 24-to-48-hour window and porous absorption are written for water. Ash is a different contaminant with different published handling, and the two most useful documents are a federal page about possessions and a county fact sheet about pets.

EPA says ash from burned structures at the wildland-urban interface generally contains more harmful chemicals than forest ash. Its list includes asbestos, heavy metals (lead, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, nickel and zinc), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, dioxins and furans. Do not add a substance to that list or attach a concentration or health threshold to anything on it.

Under its Possessions heading, EPA says to decide which possessions can safely be cleaned and saved and which should be discarded. In general, furnishings with hard surfaces (ceramics, glass, wood, metal) and items that can be thoroughly washed (clothing, bedding, draperies) can be safely cleaned, and lightly soiled upholstered furniture may be able to be cleaned. EPA also says to consider professional assistance if you find structural damage or hazardous materials, the HVAC system is affected, or the cleanup is more than you can manage.

Compared with the flood tiers, a lightly soiled upholstered item is a maybe for ash rather than a bin, because ash is a surface deposit and flood water is an immersion. That is the biggest difference between the two events, and why a soft carrier that survived a fire has a path it would not have after a flood.

EPA’s technique instructions are for surfaces, not animals. Avoid dry sweeping or dusting. Never use a leaf blower. Mist hard surfaces with water before sweeping and follow with wet mopping, using as little water as you can. Use a HEPA vacuum if available; if you must use a typical household or shop vacuum, wear a respirator, air out the space and use an air cleaner or HVAC filter while vacuuming. EPA also says to thoroughly clean ash off all children’s toys before use. That sentence is about children, not pets, and should not be read as a pet instruction. Collected ash may go in the regular trash, stored in plastic bags or other containers so it is not stirred up, and washing ash into storm drains should be avoided. If you suspect asbestos or other hazardous waste, contact your local hazardous waste authorities about disposal. That is a stop sign and a phone call, not a bagging technique to learn from a web page.

The pet-facing half is Los Angeles County’s fact sheet, the closest thing in print to a pet-gear cleaning instruction. It says smoke residues, soot and ash can cling to surfaces, so make sure your home is thoroughly cleaned before pets roam freely, and clean floors, bedding, furniture, toys and food and water bowls before your pet uses them. It suggests crates or exercise pens to keep pets in recently cleaned or designated safe areas while the rest of the house is still dirty. It warns about hazardous chemicals, including those used in firefighting, burned materials and soot that may still be in the home, and says even small amounts can harm a pet if licked, eaten or inhaled.

On food, the county says any food exposed to smoke, heat or fire should be discarded, and refrigerated and frozen pet food should be discarded if the temperature rose above 40° Fahrenheit for two hours. On the outdoor bowl, the item most likely to be forgotten, it says not to let pets drink from puddles or water bowls left outside, to feed indoors, and to use a bowl that can be washed and cleaned after use.

If the air quality side of the return is your problem, wildfire smoke and pets works the question, dog boots for wildfire ash and hot debris covers the paws, and returning home with pets after a disaster runs the property inspection that comes before any of this sorting.

What the Published Record Does Not Cover

No agency publishes a discard-or-wash list for pet gear. The calls above come from guidance about materials. That is a statement about what is published, and if your county health department publishes something more specific, it outranks this page.

No source publishes a rule for cat litter exposed to flood water. The litter rows are our reasoning from Minnesota’s porous rule and Iowa’s solid-versus-absorbent split, and they are labeled as ours. The litter box options for shelter-in-place covers the supply side of the same problem.

The numbers on this page belong to their objects. FDA’s are for dishes and cans, Iowa’s for a washing machine, Minnesota’s for building surfaces. None crosses to an animal, and none should be converted, rounded or reused for anything else.

Nothing here makes anything safe. None of the documents describes an item as decontaminated, sterile or safe after a home cleaning. They describe a cleaning procedure and the conditions attached to it. If your animal shows any sign of illness after coming back to cleaned gear, that is a veterinary call. ASPCA Animal Poison Control, (888) 426-4435, exists for the poisoning version of that question.

The Sorting Checklist

Run this in order. The cheapest tests eliminate the most items.

• Check the exclusion list and put on what the hazard calls for. The mold guide keeps people with asthma or weakened immune systems away from moldy sites and children out of disaster cleanup; EPA’s ash page keeps people with heart or lung disease, older adults and pregnant women out of ash cleanup.
• Do not put any respirator on the animal.
• Keep the animal off the site while you sort. The animal has no business in the pile.
• Apply rule one to everything at once: broken, torn, splintered, cracked, dented, chewed or frayed goes out. That single pass empties most of a used pet kit.
• Split what is left into hard and soft. Hard means the surface is the whole item. Soft means there is an inside you cannot inspect.
• Hard items: check they are structurally sound, then wash. Crates, wire pens, litter pans, stainless and ceramic bowls, hard toys, buckles and metal tags.
• Soft items with a removable cover: launder the cover, bin the fill.
• Soft items without a removable cover, after flood water: bin them. If one is genuinely irreplaceable, the mold guide points to Smithsonian preservation guidance, not a home method.
• After a fire rather than a flood, re-run the soft items once. EPA treats lightly soiled upholstery as a maybe for ash, which flood immersion does not allow.
• Do not mix cleaning products. Bleach and ammonia is the pairing both EPA documents name.
• If you bleach anything the animal touches, rinse it thoroughly and wait for the odor to dissipate before the animal is back around it. All three of ASPCA’s conditions apply.
• Keep dryer sheets and fabric softener out of the pet laundry.
• Photograph anything you discard that carries information: the collar with its tags, the medication label, the paper vaccination certificate.
• Food and medication are discarded on their own rules, not the gear rules. Read the food page before deciding anything about a can, bag or pouch.
• If you suspect asbestos or hazardous waste in the debris, stop and call your local hazardous waste authority.
• Shower and change clothes when you leave a mold site, so you do not carry it back to wherever you are sleeping.
• Write the replacement list as you go. You will not remember at midnight what came out of the pile.

Rebuilding the Kit

The replacement list is the most valuable thing to come out of a bad afternoon, because it is an inventory of your actual kit. Two things are worth changing while you rebuild.

The first is material. Hard, nonabsorbent gear survives contamination events and soft, padded gear does not. That is not an argument for discarding your soft carrier, which exists for reasons that have nothing to do with floods. It is an argument for knowing before the event which half of your kit is disposable, so the loss is a line on a list and not a decision made while exhausted. The pet evacuation kits hub and the kit builder tool give you a place to record that split.

The second is duplication. A collar with tags, a leash and a bowl are cheap to duplicate and catastrophic to be without, and they are the items NASAAEP’s professionals treat as probable waste. A spare set stored where the event will not reach is the difference between an inconvenience and a household that cannot walk its dog. If the animal went missing and the collar is what is left, find a lost pet after a disaster is the next page.

Then note which rows above said “our call”. Those are the places where you should ask your veterinarian or county health department instead of trusting a table, because those are the places where the published record ran out and reasoning took over.

Where to Go Next

This page is the contamination-triage spoke of the pet evacuation kits hub. Before you sort anything, returning home with pets after a disaster runs the property hazard sequence. Is pet food safe after a flood or a power outage owns the container rules, the two bleach strengths FDA publishes for cans, the aflatoxin problem and the outage clock. Decontaminating a pet after floodwater or ash covers washing the animal. Flood and flash-flood pet preparedness sets the pre-event side of a flood. The pet emergency kit rotation checklist is the calendar version of kit maintenance once you have a kit again, and waterproof pet document kits covers the records that should never have been on paper in a wet garage.

One small thing this week costs nothing. Walk your kit and label each item hard or soft in your head. Hard means you will probably be washing it. Soft means you will probably be replacing it. That sort, done on a quiet afternoon, is this page compressed into two words.