Which Disasters Should I Prepare My Pets For? Build the County Hazard List Yourself

Your county’s hazard list is in its local hazard mitigation plan, and the county emergency management office can send it to you. Check it against NOAA’s Storm Events Database for your county, then confirm by phone. No national page can give you this list, and this page stores none.

Most pet preparedness advice starts from a hazard the reader is assumed to have already picked. Pack a waterproof container, because flood. Pack a carrier the animal will tolerate for hours, because evacuation. Stage the kit near an interior room, because tornado. The advice is fine. The picking is the step that gets skipped, and it is why two households in the same state can build two kits that would each fail in the other’s disaster.

Ready.gov puts that step first. Its all-hazards index (Last Updated: 07/21/2026) begins with the instruction to “Know what disasters and hazards could affect your area”, then adds that you should know how to get emergency alerts and where you would go if you need to evacuate. That is a lookup. This page shows how to run it and what to do with the answer if you have animals.

Why This Page Has No County Table

It stores no county data. The Census Bureau’s 2020 national county code file lists 3,235 county and county-equivalent entries, including territories. A static page carrying a hazard list for each would go stale within a season and could not tell you which rows had gone stale. The lookup below takes one sitting plus however long your county takes to send a document, and it puts you on records that update without us.

It computes nothing. The pet emergency kit builder takes your animals, your hazard and your destination and produces a list. This page has no inputs and no outputs. It is a method.

It publishes no risk score, rating or ranking. FEMA’s National Risk Index is a county-level federal dataset, but this page uses no figure from it. Any page that publishes a county score should tell you when it read the source and what the score measures.

Do Not Use Past Disaster Declarations as a Hazard List

FEMA’s OpenFEMA data is open, free and county-level, and its DisasterDeclarationsSummaries records carry fields such as declaration type, incident type, county code and a designated area. That makes it tempting as a county hazard feed. It is not one.

Every field in a declaration record is an identifier, a date, a place code, a declaration type, an incident label, or a yes/no administrative flag, such as whether a given assistance program was declared. That is a record of a decision people made about one event. None of the fields is a probability, a frequency or an exposure measure. A county can face a serious hazard and carry few declarations because its events stayed under the thresholds that trigger one. Another can carry many declarations from a single bad decade. The incident label names what was declared, not every hazard the county faces.

That reading is this site’s own reasoning about what the fields mean, not an instruction FEMA publishes. If a county hazard page’s evidence is a count of past declarations, you now know what it is counting.

The Method

Four steps, plus one branch for when the first step comes back empty. Do them in this order, because each one narrows what the next has to answer.

Step 1: Get the document that already lists your hazards by name

Your jurisdiction very likely has an adopted document whose job is to name the natural hazards that can affect it. Federal regulation, 44 CFR 201.6, governs local mitigation plans. As of August 15, 2026, its text said a plan’s risk assessment must include “A description of the type, location, and extent of all natural hazards that can affect the jurisdiction.” The same paragraph adds that the plan must include information on previous occurrences of hazard events and on the probability of future ones.

Ask the county emergency management office for the local hazard mitigation plan that covers your address. If you do not know who that is, USA.gov’s local governments and elected officials directory can get you to your county’s own site, and the emergency management office is normally reachable from there. Treat the directory as a starting point, not a guarantee about your county.

Five things change what you should expect to be handed.

Not every plan is an all-hazards plan. Under 201.6(a)(2), plans prepared for the FMA program need only address flood hazards, and they must be clearly identified as flood mitigation plans. A flood mitigation plan is not your hazard list. Ask whether an all-hazards plan also exists.

Not every jurisdiction has one. Section 201.6(a)(1) ties the plan requirement to grant eligibility: a local government needs an approved plan to receive HMGP project grants, and to apply for and receive mitigation project grants under all other mitigation grant programs. Section 201.6(a)(3) lets Regional Administrators grant an exception in extraordinary circumstances, such as a small and impoverished community. That exception is a deadline, not a permanent pass. The plan must be completed within 12 months of the project grant award, or the grant is terminated. So a plan probably exists, though not certainly.

The plan covering you may not have your county’s name on it. Section 201.6(a)(4) accepts multi-jurisdictional plans, such as watershed plans, as long as each jurisdiction took part and formally adopted the plan. State-wide plans are not accepted as multi-jurisdictional plans. Ask which plan covers your address rather than searching for one with your county in the title. Under 201.6(c)(2)(iii), a multi-jurisdictional plan must assess each jurisdiction’s risks only where they differ from the risks facing the whole planning area. Your county’s hazards may therefore reach you as a regional list. Ask the office whether your jurisdiction has its own risk section.

Check the date on your copy. Section 201.6(d)(3) requires a local jurisdiction to review, revise and resubmit its plan within five years to stay eligible for mitigation project grant funding. Five years is a long time in wildfire and flood terms. The date matters more than the letterhead.

The regulation does not require the plan to be posted online. Section 201.6(b)(1) requires an opportunity for public comment while the plan is drafted, and 201.6(c)(5) requires documentation that the governing body formally adopted it. A state public-records law or local ordinance may require your county to publish it; this page does not say whether yours does. If a web search does not turn the plan up, call the office and ask for it by its regulatory name, which tends to work better than asking what disasters happen here.

Step 1b: If the county has no plan, or will not send it, go up a level

Step 1 can come back empty. The plan may be flood-only, the office may never send it, and the exception in 201.6(a)(3) exists. Go up a level. USA.gov’s state government websites directory can get you to your state’s site, and the state emergency management agency is normally reachable from there. Ask it the same question and read any hazard pages it publishes for your region. This page cannot say what your state publishes.

A state-level answer is second best. Section 201.6(a)(4) says a state-wide plan is not accepted as a multi-jurisdictional plan, so it does not replace the county list. It is still an answer where the county gives none. Write down what the state names for your region, and write down that it is a state-level list, so you know which parts were never checked against your address.

Step 2: Check the weather record for your county, and read its limits first

NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information run the Storm Events Database, which searches by state and county. As of September 29, 2026, its data ran from January 1950 to June 2026, and NOAA describes it as a publicly accessible source of the National Weather Service’s Storm Data. The end date advances, so the range you see will be later.

The database publishes four limits on itself. Read them before you search.

It records impact, not weather. Storm Data documents storms and other significant weather phenomena intense enough to cause loss of life, injuries, significant property damage or disruption to commerce. NOAA adds that events that are otherwise unusual and rare are included, and that Storm Data is a partial record of other significant events, such as record temperatures or precipitation that occur in connection with another event. The organizing idea is still an event notable enough to be written up. A hazard that has not yet produced one near you can be present and absent from this record.

Its history has seams. NOAA says that changes in collection and processing over time mean different event types have different periods of record. The Database Details page says that tornadoes were the only event type recorded from 1950 to 1954, and that from 1955 to 1992 only tornado, thunderstorm wind and hail events were captured. The same three types were the only ones extracted for 1993 to 1995. It then says 55 event types have been captured since 1996. A thin 1970s is a collection artifact, not a calm decade.

Some hazards are not county-shaped. The search page says smaller-area events (tornado, thunderstorm winds, flash floods and hail) are collected by county. Larger-scale events (heat, cold, drought, flood, tropical and winter weather) are collected by forecast zone. All searches are by county, and for zone-based events the search returns every zone that intersects or lies within the county. A heat or flood result may therefore describe an area larger than your county.

The emptiest result is the most misleading. The search page says the county list is based on available records, so a county that does not appear has no events recorded for that location. Carry that away from this page. No records is not no hazard. If your county does not appear, you have learned something about the database, not about your risk. Go back to step 1, or to step 1b if step 1 has already come back empty, rather than relaxing.

For the state-level picture of which weather hazards kill and injure people, the National Weather Service publishes Weather Related Fatality and Injury Statistics, with U.S. and state summaries by year. It is a state picture, not a county one, and it counts deaths and injuries rather than how often a hazard occurs. Read it as context for the hazards your county named in step 1, not as a substitute.

Step 3: Set up how the warning will reach you

A hazard list only helps if something tells you when the hazard is arriving. A household with animals needs the alert earlier than one without, because loading takes time that starts only once the alert reaches you. That inference is this site’s own, not an agency instruction, though Ready.gov’s large-animal advice below points the same way.

To find out how long your own household takes to load, use how early to leave with pets. It turns published hazard lead times into a departure time. A hurricane’s lead time and a wildfire’s are not the same size, and the same loading time passes or fails against them differently.

Ready.gov’s alerts page (Last Updated: 05/27/2026) covers five things: Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), the Emergency Alert System, NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards, IPAWS (the system authorities send through, not one you receive), and the FEMA App. It says you are not charged for receiving WEAs and do not need to subscribe. It also says older phones may not be WEA capable and some models require you to enable WEAs. Check the settings on every handset in your household rather than assuming.

The FEMA App gives you National Weather Service alerts for up to five locations you choose, according to the same page. That is not your county’s own alert list, which carries road closures, shelter openings and evacuation notices the Weather Service does not issue. Local opt-in alert systems are run by states, counties and municipalities one at a time, each with its own sign-up page. None of the channels on Ready.gov’s page is a single registration that covers your county. Find your county’s system on your county’s own page and sign up before anything happens.

Our wildfire evacuation alert apps guide covers that layer for fire-exposed households. Because the words a warning arrives in are set locally too, evacuation levels decoded for pet owners explains why level or zone language learned in one state may mean nothing in another.

Step 4: Turn the list into a pet prep profile

You now have a list of hazard names. Ready.gov’s index says to know the hazards, know how to get alerts, and know where you would go if you need to evacuate. Steps 1 through 3 cover the first two parts.

The third part, where you would go, changes a pet plan most. Ready.gov’s pet page says “Many public shelters and hotels do not allow pets inside.” and tells you to know a safe place to take your pets before disasters happen. It also sends you to the local emergency management office, animal shelter or animal control office for additional advice if you are unsure how to care for your pet in an emergency. The national page is telling you it cannot answer the local question. Neither can we, which is why the last step of this method is a phone call.

Sort the hazards into the parts of a pet plan. Mapping a hazard list onto this site’s four hubs is our own reasoning, not something an agency publishes. Two of the four are hazard-shaped and two are not.

• If your list includes anything with an evacuation in it (hurricane, wildfire, flood, tsunami, dam failure), the pet emergency playbooks hub is the per-hazard layer. The destination question is the costly one to leave unanswered.
• The pet evacuation kits hub is not tied to one hazard. It covers kit structure and staging, and it matters most for whatever arrives with minutes or no warning, such as tornado and earthquake, where the kit has to be staged rather than assembled. Earthquake and tornado pet prep is the per-hazard page filed under that hub.
• If your list includes anything that takes the power out, and almost every list does, pets through power outages is the shelter-in-place layer.
• Multi-pet emergency planning is not on your hazard list at all, because your household sets it, not your county. It applies whichever hazard arrives.

Then hand the hazard names to the builder, once each. The pet emergency kit builder asks you to choose a single value under “Biggest regional hazard” from seven options, alongside your animal counts and your destination, and it rewrites the list around that choice. It takes six named hazards plus a general setting: hurricane, flood, wildfire or smoke, winter storm, earthquake and extreme heat. If your plan names a hazard it does not carry, such as tornado or dam failure, run it on “Not sure / general prep” and take the hazard-specific items from that hazard’s page in the pet emergency playbooks hub.

A county with four hazards has no single biggest one in any useful sense. Run the builder once per hazard, print each result, and keep the union of the items. Note which hazard each unusual item belongs to, so you know what you can leave behind when only one of them is happening. That instruction is ours, not a published protocol. A union of four lists is heavier than any one of them, so weigh it against what one person can carry alongside the animals before you call it a go-bag. The arithmetic is in multi-pet go-bag math. The builder’s page also makes a point worth carrying here: the destination changes the kit more than the hazard does.

Species. Where a source publishes a species-specific instruction, we use it instead of inventing a matrix. Ready.gov’s pet page has a section headed “Tips for Large Animals” for horses, goats and pigs. It says to evacuate animals earlier when possible and to map primary and secondary routes in advance. That advice is split by species, not by hazard, and it is about lead time, the same variable your hazard list controls. A hurricane gives you days to use it and a wildfire may give you an hour.

The rest of that list does not assume evacuation succeeds. It tells owners to make available the vehicles and trailers needed to transport each type of animal, along with experienced handlers and drivers, and to ensure destinations have food, water, veterinary care and handling equipment. Then it covers the case where evacuation fails: “If evacuation is not possible, animal owners must decide whether to move large animals to a barn or turn them loose outside.” Ready.gov describes a decision it leaves to the owner, not an instruction. A large-animal household should settle which way it would go before the hazard list is anything but paper.

Which branch is right depends on the hazard, and at least one jurisdiction publishes a flat rule against turning a horse loose. The Town of Woodside, California says “Remain calm and never free your horse to fend for itself.” Woodside writes that about evacuating when time is short, not about the case where evacuation is impossible. Read it as one jurisdiction’s position on the release option, not a direct answer to Ready.gov’s sentence. Our horse and livestock evacuation basics page works the fire, wind and flood branches separately, because they do not point the same way. Read the branch for your hazard before you open a gate.

This page has no species-by-hazard grid. A cell in one needs a source for that exact pairing, and we have sourced cells for only a handful. The per-species pages carry what we have: horse and livestock evacuation basics for large animals and where exotic pets are accepted during an evacuation for animals that a door turns away.

The destination question. Whether your county runs a pet-friendly shelter is a county question, and it is answered in the same phone call. Our state pet shelter policy finder gives you each state’s own published wording as a starting point, and when your county has no pet-friendly shelter builds the fallback ladder for the answer nobody wants.

Reading Ready.gov in Spanish

Ready.gov publishes a Spanish hazard tree, including a Spanish pet page (Cuidado de los animales) with the same Last Updated date as the English one, 03/20/2026. This page does not translate agency material or compose care instructions in any language. The comparison below is ours, not something Ready.gov publishes, and we are not saying either page renders the other.

The two pages do not match on the large-animal advice. The English page says Evacuate animals earlier, whenever possible. The Spanish page says “Evacúe a los animales siempre que sea posible.” The English sentence carries the word “earlier” and the Spanish sentence has no equivalent of it. Lead time matters with large animals, so if you are working from the Spanish page, read the English page as well.

A second difference matters more. The English page says owners must decide whether to move large animals to a barn or turn them loose outside. The Spanish page says “Si no es posible desalojar, los dueños de animales deben decidir si trasladan a los animales grandes a un refugio o si los liberan al aire libre.” The English names a barn. The Spanish names un refugio, the same word the Spanish page uses higher up for public emergency shelters, in “Muchos refugios públicos y hoteles no permiten que las mascotas se alojen.”

Reading the refugio of the large-animal bullet as the same kind of place as the refugios públicos of the earlier one is our reading, and we do not know which meaning the agency intended. We raise it because of where it lands. A Spanish-reading large-animal owner who takes it that way would head for the kind of destination the same page says often will not take animals, at the moment evacuation has already failed. If that bullet is the one you are acting on, read the English wording alongside it, and settle the destination in advance with the emergency management office rather than at the gate.

The One-Sitting Version

• Find your county emergency management office through your county’s own site, and ask which local hazard mitigation plan covers your address. Ask by name.
• When you get it, check three things before reading it: the adoption date, whether it is an all-hazards plan or a flood mitigation plan, and whether it is a multi-jurisdictional plan covering more than your county.
• Write down every natural hazard the plan names for your jurisdiction. That list, not a national ranking, is your prep scope.
• If no plan covers you, or the office will not send one, do not loop back to the same call. Take whatever hazards your state emergency management agency’s pages name for your region, reached through USA.gov’s state government websites directory, and write down that what you have is a state-level list.
• Search NOAA’s Storm Events Database for your state and county. Treat a thin or empty result as a gap in the record, not as reassurance, and remember that heat, cold, drought, flood, tropical and winter weather come back by forecast zone. If drought is one of your hazards, our pet water during a drought or water restriction guide covers the water plan for it.
• Sign up for your county’s own alert system on your county’s own page, since none of the national alert channels covers it. Then check Wireless Emergency Alerts on every handset in the household.
• Sort the hazard list: which entries force an evacuation, which arrive with no warning, and which take the power out. An entry can land in more than one column.
• Time your own loading once, with the animals, and set it against the lead time your worst hazard gives you. That arithmetic is on how early to leave with pets.
• Run the kit builder once per hazard, print each list, and keep the union. Then weigh the union against what you can carry with the animals in your other hand, which is what multi-pet go-bag math is for.
• Ask the same office two more questions while you have them: whether the county operates a pet-friendly shelter, and whether it requires pre-registration.
• Put the hazard list, the office’s phone number and the shelter answer on one page in the go-bag, dated.
• Redo the whole thing when your plan’s date rolls over, which the regulation puts on a five-year cycle.

Where to Go Next

This page is the scoping step for our pet emergency playbooks hub. Once you know your hazards, three routes open.

Pack for them. The pet emergency kit builder turns a hazard, an animal roster and a destination into a list, and the pet evacuation kits hub covers the structure underneath it.

Time them. If a hurricane is on your list, the hurricane-season pet prep calendar puts dated rows against your basin’s published season. If your list is mostly no-warning hazards, staging beats scheduling, and shelter in place or evacuate is the decision that sits on top of both.

Settle the destination. When your county has no pet-friendly shelter builds the ladder, and the state pet shelter policy finder gives you each state’s own words to start the call with.

Then make the call this week, while nothing is happening. The office that would be swamped during an event answers the phone on a Tuesday afternoon. Ask the date of the plan they send you, and set your own reminder at the five-year mark that 201.6(d)(3) sets for the county’s own review, rather than assuming the list stays accurate until then.