The Pet of an Assisted Living or Nursing Home Resident When the Facility Evacuates

The federal emergency rule for nursing facilities never mentions an animal, and assisted living is not covered by it at all. So there is no general rule that answers what happens to your parent’s cat or dog when the building evacuates. The answer is in that building’s own emergency plan and residency agreement, so ask for both in writing before a season starts. If the facility will not answer, the State Long-Term Care Ombudsman and the state licensing agency are the offices that do not run through the front desk.

The text lands at nine at night and you are a thousand miles away. Your mother’s assisted living community is evacuating, buses are coming in the morning, and nobody has mentioned the cat. You call the front desk and get voicemail. The residency agreement you signed last year has a paragraph about pet deposits, a paragraph about breed restrictions, and nothing about a storm. You search for the rule and find article after article describing a federal regulation that may not apply to your mother’s building at all.

This page is written for two people. One is choosing a community, months or years ahead, and wants to know whether the animal can come and what happens in an emergency. The other is on the phone tonight. If you are the second person, start with When the facility will not answer, or has already gone.

The finding that organizes everything below is not that nobody has thought about this. A state regulator, a county template and a trade association guide all address resident animals in writing. The finding is narrower: every emergency-planning rule cited on this page, federal and state, is silent on resident animals. Three guidance documents written for exactly these facilities are not silent. And guidance is not what a surveyor cites a facility for missing. A facility can satisfy every emergency-planning criterion those rules impose and still have no answer for your mother’s cat when the buses come.

This is not legal advice. This page does not say who is legally responsible for a resident’s animal, what a court would decide, or whether a facility has breached any duty. It names the jurisdiction and date of each document so you can read it yourself. Rules differ by state and change, so verify against your own state and your own signed agreement.

First, which rulebook your building is under

Almost every mistake in this subject starts here. “Long-term care” in ordinary speech covers nursing homes, assisted living communities, memory care units and board-and-care homes. In federal regulation it does not.

A Medicare or Medicaid participating nursing facility is covered by 42 CFR 483.73. That section sits inside Subpart B of Part 483, and 42 CFR 483.5 defines “facility” for the subpart as a skilled nursing facility or a nursing facility that meets the Act’s requirements. It may include a distinct part of an institution and excludes institutions for individuals with intellectual disabilities. This is a participation regime: it reaches buildings that bill those programs.

Assisted living is not in that regime. CMS publishes its surveyor guidance for the Emergency Preparedness Rule as Appendix Z of the State Operations Manual (Rev. 204, Issued 04-16-21). Its table of contents lists seventeen provider and supplier types, including hospitals, hospices, home health agencies, long-term care facilities, dialysis facilities and rural health clinics. Assisted living is not one of them, and the phrase does not appear in the document. An article telling an assisted living reader that CMS requires their community to have a plan under 483.73 describes a rule that does not reach them. Appendix Z is also a 2021 revision, so check the CMS manuals page for a newer transmittal before relying on its date.

So assisted living is a state licensing question, and states do not agree on the name. California licenses a residential care facility for the elderly. Florida and Virginia license an assisted living facility. Federal law, which must reach all of them, uses more names: 42 U.S.C. 3002(35) covers a nursing facility, a board and care facility, and “any other adult care home, including an assisted living facility, similar to a facility or institution described in subparagraphs (A) through (C).” To find out which category your building is in, ask the community what it is licensed as and to see the license, ask the state agency that issued it, or ask the local Long-Term Care Ombudsman, whose remit covers both categories.

What the federal rule requires, and the shape of what it leaves out

If your parent is in a Medicare or Medicaid nursing facility, 42 CFR 483.73 is the rule, and the shape of it is the finding.

Subsection (a) requires an emergency plan, reviewed at least annually, based on a documented facility-based and community-based risk assessment using an all-hazards approach, including missing residents. Subsection (b) lists what the policies and procedures must address at a minimum:

• Subsistence needs for staff and residents, whether they evacuate or shelter in place, starting with food, water, medical and pharmaceutical supplies, then alternate energy to maintain safe temperatures, emergency lighting, fire detection and alarm systems, and sewage and waste disposal.
• A system to track on-duty staff and sheltered residents, and, if residents are relocated, to document “the specific name and location of the receiving facility or other location.”
• Safe evacuation, including care and treatment needs, staff responsibilities, transportation, evacuation locations, and communication with outside help.
• A means to shelter in place for residents, staff and volunteers who remain.
• Medical documentation, use of volunteers and other staffing strategies, and arrangements with other long-term care facilities and providers to receive residents if operations are limited or cease.

Subsection (c) requires a communication plan with contact information for staff, physicians, other facilities and volunteers, plus the State Licensing and Certification Agency and the Office of the State Long-Term Care Ombudsman, and a means of providing information about the general condition and location of residents. Subsections (d) and (e) add training, two exercises a year, and emergency and standby power.

As of the 2024 annual edition of the CFR, the words animal, pet and service animal do not appear in 483.73, or anywhere in Part 483 (Subparts A through I, including the definitions at 483.5, resident rights at 483.10 and physical environment at 483.90). They also do not appear in the final rule that created the section, 81 FR 63860 (September 16, 2016). So the subject never appears in the rulemaking record. It is not that CMS weighed resident animals and decided against requiring plans for them; no source cited here says so.

The one place CMS’s nursing home surveyor guidance mentions an animal

CMS’s Appendix PP (Rev. 232, Issued 07-23-25) uses animal or pet words in only two places. One is a bullet in a list of individualized, non-pharmacological interventions for behavioral health needs: “Providing access to pets or animals for the resident who enjoys pets” (the bullet continues with an example). The other is the phrase “human, animal, or microorganisms” inside a definition of biologicals. It does not use the term service animal. That bullet is about the facility providing access to an animal as part of person-centered care. It is not about a resident’s own animal, and it has nothing to do with an emergency. It does show CMS’s guidance can talk about animals when it means to, which makes the silence in Appendix Z more notable.

The resident-rights provision people reach for

Some will point to 42 CFR 483.10(e)(2), which gives a nursing facility resident “The right to retain and use personal possessions, including furnishings, and clothing, as space permits” unless doing so would infringe on other residents’ rights or health and safety. Whether a provision whose own examples are furnishings and clothing reaches a living animal is a legal question this page does not answer. What can be said is that the word animal does not appear in that section or elsewhere in Part 483. If someone tells you that regulation settles your parent’s cat, ask where a court has said so, and ask a lawyer licensed in your state.

The guidance is not silent, and that gap is the problem

Three documents written for these facility types address resident animals. Each has a different kind of authority.

Texas Health and Human Services asks the question outright. Its long-term care page Core Function Five: Evacuation says to ensure your disaster plan considers a list of topics. Under “Preparing to Leave the Facility,” introduced by “Consider questions such as,” the fourth is: “How will you evacuate the pets of your residents, individuals, or clients? (Some evacuation sites might not accept pets).” The same page says home and community support services agencies, nursing facilities and assisted living facilities can help their clients register with the 211 system, so assisted living is expressly in the audience, which is where the federal rule is not. Because it sits inside “Consider questions such as,” it asks the plan to answer the question and does not decide what happens to the animal. It is one state, and guidance rather than a rule.

Snohomish County, Washington, puts it on a planning checklist. The county publishes an undated 32-page Disaster Preparedness Plan Template for long term care facilities. Its item “Plan for evacuation and relocation of residents” has fifteen lettered sub-items, a through o, running from who implements the evacuation to transportation, mutual aid, routes, timing and resident tracking. Item k is: “Plan for evacuation and shelter of pets and service animals.” That is one county’s template. It binds nobody, but it shows that when someone writes a complete evacuation checklist for a long-term care building, the animal turns up on it.

A Florida trade association wrote a section about it in 2006. The Florida Health Care Association and the Florida Center for Assisted Living publish a Disaster Preparedness Guide for Assisted Living Facilities with a 2006 copyright. Its page 30 has a section headed Pets, telling administrators that if residents enjoy pets, they must include them in emergency management plans. It runs Before the Storm, During a Storm and After a Storm, with a pet disaster supply kit list and a suggestion to involve residents in a “pet patrol.” Its evacuation checklist includes: “Staff assigned and trained to do a final check on facility to ensure all residents and pets are out of the building before the facility is left.” This is a trade association guide, not a regulator, it is the oldest thing on this page, and it is hosted by a third party, so treat it as what the association published, not as anyone’s current position.

A species note. The phrase “furry, feathered, and finned” is the association’s wording, not an endorsement of every species in a care community. The 2022 compendium on non-traditional pets from the National Association of State Public Health Veterinarians and CDC says not to keep reptiles in “facilities that care for older adults and those with weakened immune systems (such as long-term care facilities and nursing homes).” It repeats the same facility instruction for amphibians, fish and other aquatic animals; backyard poultry; and pet rodents and some other small mammals such as hedgehogs. That is a public health recommendation, not a licensing rule. Our page on where exotic pets are accepted during an evacuation covers the compendium at length.

The join, which is ours

What the sources say: the federal emergency rule for nursing facilities, CMS’s guidance for it, and the rulemaking record contain no reference to an animal. A state regulator, a county template and a trade association guide do.

What none of them does: make anything happen. Texas asks the plan to consider the question. Snohomish County offers a template line. The Florida association offers a checklist item. None is a requirement a surveyor cites a facility for missing.

What this site concludes, as our own reasoning: across the documents cited here, the animal question sits in the guidance layer rather than in enforceable emergency rules. One state cited here does regulate resident pets in an enforceable licensing standard, and never carries the subject into its emergency rules (Virginia, below). So a facility can meet every criterion those rules impose and still not have an answer for a resident’s cat. The useful action is not to look up the rule. It is to get your facility’s own written answer, from its own plan and residency agreement, while nobody is under pressure.

What three states require

There is no national answer. Three states are covered here. They differ in design, not merely strictness, and none is evidence about a fourth. No claim is made about how many states do what.

Florida: a form, with a county-sized hole in it

Florida assisted living facilities submit a Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan against AHCA Form 3180-5006 (September 2023), incorporated by rule 59A-36.019 of the Florida Administrative Code. The form says these criteria are the format for compliance review by designated plan approvers. It contains no occurrence of animal, pet or service animal.

The form also says county emergency management agencies may require additional information or revise specific criteria because of a facility’s location, hazard analysis or resident demographics. That is where a local answer may exist. If you are in Florida, ask your county emergency management agency whether it has added anything. This page makes no claim about Florida’s separate planning form for nursing homes (AHCA Form 3110-6006) and does not infer its contents from the assisted living form.

California: a long list, a right to read the plan, and no animal on it

California’s requirement for residential care facilities for the elderly is Health and Safety Code section 1569.695, amended by SB 582, effective January 1, 2026. The plan must include, among much else:

• Evacuation procedures with a marked assembly point.
• Plans to be self-reliant for at least 72 hours after any emergency, including a power failure.
• Transportation and evacuation procedures, with vehicle keys available to staff on all shifts.
• A contact list including emergency response personnel, the Community Care Licensing Division, the local long-term care ombudsman, and transportation providers.
• At least two appropriate shelter locations, one of them outside the immediate area.
• Procedures for emergency power, inoperable call buttons, communicating with residents and families, medication administration and storage, assistive devices needing electricity, and confirming each resident’s location.

The section contains no occurrence of animal or pet. But subsection (g) is genuinely useful to a family: a facility shall make the plan available on request to residents onsite, “any responsible party for a resident, the local long-term care ombudsman, and local emergency responders.” Whether your state has anything similar is a question for your licensing agency.

Subsections (i) and (k) show how thin the inspection layer is. The Community Care Licensing Division confirms during annual visits that the plan is on file and includes required content, and nothing in the section creates a new requirement for the department to evaluate the plan. Confirming a plan exists is a different act from evaluating whether it would work.

Virginia: resident pets regulated in detail, and the emergency rules never mention them

Virginia shows the shape of the problem most cleanly, because both halves sit in the same chapter and never touch.

Its standards for licensed assisted living facilities include 22VAC40-73-840, Pets living in the assisted living facility. Subsection A requires “a written policy regarding pets living on the premises” that ensures the safety and well-being of all residents and staff. Where pets are allowed, the policy must state the types permitted and the conditions. Before living on the premises, pets must have had all recommended or required immunizations and be certified by a licensed veterinarian to be free of diseases transmittable to humans. Resident pets must have regular examinations and appropriate immunizations, are restricted from central food preparation areas, must have documentation at the facility, and must have a suitable temperament and be healthy. A companion section, 22VAC40-73-850, governs visiting pets. Neither contains the string “evacuat” or the word “disaster.”

Part IX of the same chapter, Emergency Preparedness, is five sections: 950 (emergency preparedness and response plan), 960 (fire and emergency evacuation plan), 970 (drills), 980 (equipment and supplies) and 990 (plan for resident emergencies). Section 950 requires written procedures for assessing the situation, protecting residents, staff, equipment, medications and vital records, and restoring services, including conducting evacuations and sheltering in place and accounting for all residents. Across all of Part IX there are no occurrences of pet or animal. One provision is worth writing down: 22VAC40-73-990(D) says the plan for resident emergencies shall be “readily available to all staff, residents’ families, and legal representatives.” Like California’s subsection (g), that is a stated route to the document.

So: one state regulates resident pets carefully and never connects it to emergency rules. One publishes a state planning form with no animal on it and an invitation for counties to add requirements. One publishes a long statutory list with no animal on it and a right for a responsible party to read the plan. A fourth, Texas, publishes guidance that asks the question. Four jurisdictions, four shapes, and no national sentence true of all of them.

Service animals are a different question, and the difference helps less than expected

Keep these two words apart, or you end up making an argument that was never available.

A service animal under the ADA is a narrow category defined by training. 28 CFR 35.104 defines it as “any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability.” Other species, wild or domestic, trained or untrained, are not service animals. The work or tasks must be directly related to the individual’s disability. The definition’s closing sentence says emotional support, well-being, comfort or companionship “do not constitute work or tasks for the purposes of this definition.” The emotional support exclusion is part of the regulatory definition, not a later gloss.

Then the provision that decides the question this page is about. 28 CFR 35.136(e) provides: “A public entity is not responsible for the care or supervision of a service animal.” Its twin for privately operated facilities, 28 CFR 36.302(c)(5), provides: “A public accommodation is not responsible for the care or supervision of a service animal.”

The ADA rules give a service animal broad access, and in the same regulation the entity is told it is not responsible for caring for or supervising the animal. Even at its strongest, the access right does not make anybody at the facility responsible for feeding, walking or evacuating the animal. Somebody still has to, which is why the family-side plan below exists.

Which half of the ADA reaches a building depends on who operates it. Title II reaches state and local government entities, so a county-run nursing home sits there. Title III reaches privately operated public accommodations, whose categories at 28 CFR 36.104 include “A day care center, senior citizen center, homeless shelter, food bank, adoption agency, or other social service center establishment.” This page does not assign a category to a facility it has not seen, and the point does not depend on it, because both titles carry the same care-and-supervision sentence.

Housing is a separate body of law. Whether the Fair Housing Act reaches a particular residential care setting is a legal question this page does not answer. The federal picture on assistance animals in housing changed recently: HUD’s two assistance-animal notices were withdrawn effective September 17, 2025, with the withdrawal published in the Federal Register on April 6, 2026, and further enforcement guidance was issued in May 2026. Our post-disaster rental housing with pets page carries that story with the primary documents, and hosting an evacuee’s pets when your lease says no covers the neighboring version. If a disability accommodation is genuinely at stake, the routes are a lawyer, a fair housing agency, or the facility’s own accommodation process.

The PETS Act, and where it stops

Many pages, including others on this site, cite the PETS Act, so you may expect it to apply here. It does not, and saying so is more useful than stretching it.

The Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act of 2006 is Public Law 109-308. Its long title says it amends the Stafford Act to ensure State and local emergency preparedness operational plans address the needs of individuals with household pets and service animals following a major disaster or emergency. Section 2 requires that plans approved under 42 U.S.C. 5196b take those needs into account before, during and after a major disaster. Section 3 adds plans that take pets and service animals into account to the preparedness measures at 42 U.S.C. 5196, and authorizes financial contributions to States and local authorities for animal emergency preparedness, including shelter facilities and materials. Section 4 adds to the essential assistance provision at 42 U.S.C. 5170b(a)(3) the “provision of rescue, care, shelter, and essential needs” to individuals with household pets and service animals and to those animals.

Every operative provision reaches a government emergency plan, a federal standard, a federal contribution or federal assistance. Nothing in the Act’s text is addressed to a private facility’s own emergency plan. It is why a county may run a pet-friendly shelter and why a state plan is supposed to account for households with animals. It is not a rule about the building your parent lives in.

What to ask, before move-in and before the season

Each question below has a document behind it, and each is a question rather than an entitlement. Ask in writing, in the off season, and keep the answers with the residency agreement.

1. What is this community licensed as, and is it Medicare or Medicaid certified? This decides whether 42 CFR 483.73 reaches the building at all. Ask for the license, and if the answer is vague, ask the state agency that issued it or the local ombudsman.

2. What does the residency or admission agreement say about the animal in an evacuation? Ask for that paragraph now. The same discipline applies as in our page on your pet being at a boarding facility when the order hits: the document that decides this is the one somebody signed, not a general rule about the category. Do not carry boarding and kennel statutes across; they govern businesses that board animals, and a residence for people is a different licensing category.

3. Does the emergency plan name a receiving facility, and does that facility accept animals? These are two questions. Texas HHS supplies the reason in its parenthetical: “(Some evacuation sites might not accept pets)”. A community with a mutual aid agreement with a sister property forty miles inland has answered the first question and may not have asked the second.

4. May we read the emergency plan? California section 1569.695(g) and Virginia 22VAC40-73-990(D) give stated routes. Ask your licensing agency whether yours has one. Where there is no such rule, asking politely still often works.

5. Who is authorized to collect the animal, and where do they live? This field fails in a regional evacuation. If the person named is a spouse or adult child leaving in the same car on the same closed highway, the field has stopped doing anything. Name somebody outside the resident’s evacuation zone, tell them, and confirm the facility has a current number. What that person can authorize is answered on our pet authority documents guide.

6. Who is the local Long-Term Care Ombudsman, and is that number already on the facility’s contact list? For a nursing facility, 42 CFR 483.73(c)(2)(iii) requires the Office of the State Long-Term Care Ombudsman on the emergency communication plan. For a California residential care facility for the elderly, section 1569.695(a)(4)(C) requires the local ombudsman on the contact list. It is a number the facility is supposed to have.

The federal checklist that comes closest

CMS once published a consumer-side version of this: an Emergency Planning Checklist for persons in long-term care facilities and their families, friends, caregivers, guardians and ombudsmen, dated September 2007, six pages. Part I tells families to ask about the facility’s emergency plan, including exits, alarms, how residents requiring assistance will be evacuated and identified, where they will go, how medical charts move, and how families will be notified. Part II is for ombudsmen. Its footer warns that some recommended tasks may exceed federal regulatory requirements. The checklist contains no occurrence of animal or pet: CMS’s own consumer-side list of what to ask a facility, written for this reader, does not include the animal. It is old enough that no procedural detail in it should be treated as current. The link goes to an archived copy.

The family-side standby plan, and the form this page does not publish

A page like this is supposed to end with a printable authorization sheet. This page does not publish one, because this site already publishes the printable and the doctrine that governs it. Our neighbor pet emergency access agreement is the fill-in instrument. Our pet authority documents guide compares a durable power of attorney, a pet trust and a caregiver letter against primary law. And our page on being the pet sitter when the order comes states what every such sheet has to be read against: a signed letter is an agreement between owner and helper, and the checkpoint officer, landlord, boarding facility and shelter did not sign it. A second sheet here would split that asset and imply that a sheet grants an authority it does not.

What this setting changes: the animal is not in a home the helper can be given a key to, so the person named has to be somebody the facility will actually release an animal to, on file with the facility in advance, and the destination is somewhere other than the resident’s address, because that is the building being evacuated.

The standby plan is a set of arrangements, a variant of the relay on our essential worker lockdown pet care relay page:

• A named standby caregiver who lives outside the resident’s evacuation zone. One name is a single point of failure. Two is a plan.
• That person’s details on file with the facility, in writing, before the season. Ask what form the facility wants; this cannot be done by phone from a shelter parking lot.
• A carrier and small kit staged where the standby caregiver can reach them, not in the resident’s room. A carrier inside an evacuated building is not a carrier.
• The animal’s veterinary practice and microchip registration current and reachable by the caregiver. Our pet emergency binder is the records layer.
• The facility’s evacuation timing understood in advance. A care facility does not move on the same clock as a household. Our T-minus storm countdown card works one county’s figures through: Monroe County, Florida, under a comprehensive plan policy restated in a 2012 county resolution, initiates mandatory evacuation of mobile home residents, special needs residents, and hospital and nursing home patients at approximately 36 hours ahead of tropical storm winds. That applies only to a stated class of storm, comes from a 2012 restatement, and the county’s current evacuation page publishes no hour figures, so confirm with your county rather than plan against it. The point is that the group your parent belongs to may be moved earlier than permanent residents by zone, so check that assumption. Whatever your county’s answer, it is why the animal question has to be settled before a watch is posted.

When the facility will not answer, or has already gone

Everything above assumes somebody picks up the phone. Here is what to do when nobody does.

Start with two questions, not with the animal. Where are the residents being taken, and is the animal travelling with them or does it have to be collected, and by when? For a nursing facility, 42 CFR 483.73(b)(2) requires the facility to document “the specific name and location of the receiving facility or other location.” 42 CFR 483.73(c)(6) requires a means of providing information about the general condition and location of residents. Those requirements are about people. The connection to your problem is our reasoning, not the regulation’s: the record that says where your mother went tells you which building to ask about the cat.

Do not drive to an evacuated building and try to get in. The person who can open a door is the one you need on the phone, and a facility under an order may be empty. Our page on a pet at a commercial facility when the order hits quotes one veterinary hospital’s own published warning about entering its premises without staff; that is its terms, not a general rule, but the practical lesson transfers.

Then three routes that do not run through the front desk.

The State Long-Term Care Ombudsman. This is the one instrument here that covers both facility types. Where the federal emergency rule stops at the nursing facility door, the ombudsman definition in 42 U.S.C. 3002(35) walks through it. Under 42 U.S.C. 3058g, a state agency must “establish and operate an Office of the State Long-Term Care Ombudsman” to receive its allotment, and the ombudsman’s functions begin with identifying, investigating and resolving complaints “made by, or on behalf of, residents” that relate to actions or decisions that may adversely affect residents’ health, safety, welfare or rights. The Administration for Community Living describes the program as working on those problems for people in nursing homes, board and care and assisted living facilities and other residential care communities, and links a state-by-state locator.

Three limits on that route. The program is not about animals; your question will reach it as a question about a resident. This page cannot predict what it will do or how fast. And it is for a complaint or problem, not an emergency service: if there is an immediate threat to a person, call emergency services.

The state licensing and certification agency. This office licenses and inspects the building. For a nursing facility its contact information must be on the emergency communication plan under 42 CFR 483.73(c)(2)(ii); for a California residential care facility, section 1569.695(a)(4)(B) puts the Community Care Licensing Division on the contact list. If you do not know which agency licenses your parent’s building, the ombudsman does.

County emergency management. The building sits in a county that issued or relayed the order and knows where facility evacuations in its jurisdiction went. It can also tell you whether a pet-friendly shelter is open, a separate question from what the facility did.

If the animal is confirmed alone in a building and nobody is going in, that is an animal rescue request: see how to request a pet welfare check or rescue. If the animal has been taken somewhere and you need to establish it is your parent’s, see proving a pet is yours and reclaiming it.

If all of those fail, the last route is a lawyer licensed in that state, through the state bar’s lawyer referral service or the legal aid organization serving that county. Our pet authority documents guide covers those routes and the federal Disaster Legal Services program with its narrow eligibility limits. This page tells you where the door is, not what is behind it.

What this page will not tell you

Who is legally responsible for a resident’s animal. That is a legal conclusion about a specific facility, agreement and state’s law. What can be said is narrower: none of the instruments cited here says who evacuates a resident’s animal or who is responsible for it in an emergency. The closest is Virginia’s licensing standard for pets living in an assisted living facility, which requires a written policy and says pets must be well-treated and cared for in compliance with state regulations and local ordinances, and which never mentions an evacuation or disaster.

Whether a facility’s pet policy or evacuation handling was lawful. Same reason. The routes are a lawyer in that state, the state licensing agency, and the ombudsman.

Whether a resident can still care for an animal. That is a clinical and capacity judgment about a person, and this preparedness site has no standing to make one. It can tell you what facilities are required to publish about their pet policies. It will not assess your parent.

How to feel about it, or what to say. A much-loved animal and a person being separated is a real and common version of this situation. This site has no credentialed reviewer who could responsibly write guidance on it, and no source cited here addresses it: the closest, a list of principles for relocated residents in CMS’s 2007 checklist, is entirely about moving a person between buildings. If that is the hardest part right now, the facility’s staff, someone you trust, or your own clinician are better places to take it.

The checklist

Before move-in, or before the season if your parent is already there:

• Establish what the community is licensed as, and whether it is Medicare or Medicaid certified. That decides whether 42 CFR 483.73 applies at all
• Get the paragraph in the residency or admission agreement covering the animal in an evacuation, on paper
• Ask whether the emergency plan names a receiving facility, and separately whether that receiving facility accepts animals
• Ask to read the emergency plan. In California and Virginia there is a stated route to it; elsewhere, ask anyway
• Name a standby caregiver who lives outside the resident’s evacuation zone, and a second one behind them
• Get that person on file with the facility in writing, and confirm the facility has a current phone number
• Stage a carrier and a small kit somewhere the standby caregiver can reach without entering the resident’s room
• Confirm the animal’s veterinary practice and microchip registration are current, and that the standby caregiver can reach both
• Write down the local Long-Term Care Ombudsman’s number, the state licensing agency’s number, and county emergency management’s number, and keep them with the residency agreement
• Find out what phase of your county’s evacuation sequence moves care facilities, and do not assume it is the same phase as your own household’s

If it is happening now:

• Call the facility and ask two things: where the residents are going, and whether the animal travels with them or must be collected, and by when
• If the facility does not answer, call the ombudsman, the state licensing agency and county emergency management, in that order
• Do not drive to an evacuated building and try to get in. Get the person who can open the door on the phone instead
• If the animal is confirmed alone and nobody is entering the building, switch to a welfare check or rescue request
• Write down every call: who, when, what number, what they said. It is the record that makes the next call shorter

Related reading

• Your pet is at a facility when the order hits is the same problem where the animal is the one in someone else’s building, and it works the contract layer in detail.
• Pet authority documents: power of attorney, trust and caregiver letter owns the question of whose signature authorizes what, with primary law.
• Neighbor pet emergency access agreement is the printable instrument this site publishes, and the reason this page publishes none of its own.
• Essential worker lockdown pet care relay is the caregiver relay this page’s standby plan is a variant of, including the veterinary consent question.
• T-minus storm countdown card for pets carries the county-by-county evacuation clocks, including the phase that moves nursing home patients.
• Request a pet welfare check or rescue is where to go when the animal is confirmed alone and nobody is going in.
• Evacuating when the owner cannot lift the pet and evacuating a senior or disabled pet cover the mobility side, for the owner and for the animal.
• Post-disaster rental housing with pets carries the current federal picture on assistance animals in housing.
• This page sits under the pet emergency playbooks library.