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The purpose of this paper is to review the vulnerability and challenges faced by Canadian pet owners in times of disaster and evaluate emergency preparedness measures put in place to address the identified issues.

Emergency preparedness strategies from different countries were identified to weigh against Canada’s state of preparedness.

Pet/animal owners without emergency plans for their animals are more vulnerable than non-pet owners when they need to flee from disaster; and as Canada faces disaster challenges, proactive preparedness in emergency demands awareness, cooperation and commitment from everyone –governments, corporations, community groups and individuals become a necessity.

Based on the identified need, the paper reviews strategies that engages pet owners in preparing for emergency in order to keep individuals and their communities safe. This paper will be beneficial to policy makers, researchers, health educators, scholars and emergency management professionals that read the journal.

The purpose of this study is to examine people’s preferences for some of the key attributes of emergency shelters, including type, privacy level, location, spatial arrangement and pet-friendliness.

Choice experiment (CE) method was used in this study. A standard CE questionnaire was designed and completed by a sample of 293 residents of the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario (Canada), during the winter of 2015.

When using publicly provided shelters, people prefer to stay in hotels, places of worship and then community shelters, in that order. These findings correspond to the values that they place for various attributes through the CE survey. Findings show that responders place the highest values for emergency shelters that provide more privacy, located close to their home, and are pet friendly. Type of shelter and the “arrangement” attributes were not found to be as important and valuable.

This study uses a convenient sampling method as such may not fully represent the study population.

Emergency shelter provision by local, regional and national governments cost significant amount of money and thus it is important that the society get the maximum benefit from it. This will be possible when users’ preferences are considered in planning, design, and operation of emergency shelters. The findings enable emergency managers to perform cost-benefit analysis an increase the efficiency of emergency shelters.

While previous studies have examined emergency-shelter types, characteristics and user-satisfaction levels, this is a novel study because it uses a choice experiment method to extract monetary values for key emergency-shelter attributes.

This project aims to improve understanding of disaster preparedness and resilience, as well as animal recovery during a disaster event. The purpose of this study is to determine the type and extent of repair/renovation work required to bring proposed animal safe places and their different components up to the minimum standard for an operational animal evacuation site.

On-site survey using a five-point Likert scale questionnaire was used to collect data through a five stage processes beginning with the creation of a facility register and continuing with the development of assessment guidelines, assessment planning, actual assessment and reporting. In the Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia, 25 potential animal evacuation sites, including saleyards, showgrounds, animal shelters and racecourses, were identified and accessed.

The findings of the study reveals that none of the facilities are of high standard. However, 16% would require cosmetic work, 76% would require minor work and the remaining facilities would require significant work. According to the characteristics of the facilities assessed, saleyards have a greater capacity to accommodate animals ranging in size from large to small. More than half of the facilities have average to excellent hay sheds and wash bays, whereas less than half have dedicated animal quarantine space.

The findings of this study should assist government agencies, local councils, emergency management teams and other stakeholders in planning for and considering renovation/upgrade of potential animal safe places.

The assessment guideline developed as part of this research can be included in the local council’s emergency management plan to improve adequate planning for safe animal evacuation.

Bill Freudenburg’s concept of recreancy is used as a frame for explaining processes that perpetuate questionable regimes of emergency response planning. The specific instance of tar sands upgrading in Alberta, Canada, is used as a case in point. When recreancy is institutionalized so that the results correlate across permitted hazardous facilities, it must be concluded that recreancy is less of a situational response than a normative dynamic.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the responses to it that were required from frontline healthcare providers and others working in healthcare settings including environmental, clerical, and security staff, has challenged our healthcare systems in unprecedented ways. The threats to the financial, physical, and psychological well-being of healthcare professionals – many of whom entered the field due at least in part to a deep commitment to caring for and helping others – will have profound and long-lasting personal and professional impacts. Early in the pandemic response, healthcare professionals knew little about the risks they, their patients, and their loved ones faced from COVID-19 as they operated under crisis standards of care and without adequate supplies of personal protective equipment. As the pandemic response progressed, the lack of clear, science-based guidance, and the politicization of the pandemic presented new medical, ethical, and moral dilemmas. New psychological support mechanisms, including crisis counseling and evidence-based interventions, are needed for all workers in healthcare settings, regardless of their job role.

Of all the deaths associated with disasters, bushfires account for 40% of these fatalities. The resulting fatalities are consequent upon householders’ decision-making, leading to late or non-evacuation from at-risk communities. However, while decision-making is a function of risk perception, this paper aims to investigate householders’ perceptions of bushfire risks following the catastrophic Black Summer bushfires of 2019/2020.

An inductive research approach was adopted. Thirty semi-structured interviews were conducted to elicit qualitative data from southeastern NSW, Australia householders. The data were collected via face-to-face and online Zoom. Each interview was recorded, transcribed using Otter.AI and thematically analyzed with NVivo 12 Pro (Braun and Clarke, 2006, 2019). In addition, inter-rater reliability was done by engaging an independent researcher to code the de-identified data independently. The codes were cross-checked for reliability and adjusted where necessary.

It was found that bushfire risk perceptions were high among the householders in bushfire at-risk communities following the 2019/2020 Black Summer bushfires. High levels of perceptions were recorded among the participants regarding the likelihood of bushfire occurrence, concern for bushfires, severity of bushfires and vulnerability to bushfire threats.

The study’s results do not reflect all householders in the southeastern part of NSW. It was limited to 30 householders who indicated their intentions to participate and are living in the study area. Therefore, future studies should be undertaken with more participants from broader geographical areas, including emergency responders like firefighters, recovery officers and non-government organizations in charge of recovery operations. This study will add to the prioritization of risk perceptions.

All else being equal, elevated bushfire risk perceptions among participants can potentially decrease the fatalities linked with bushfires and their subsequent ripple effects. This holds particularly true when residents opt for early self-evacuation from at-risk communities.

The paper contributes to developing a better understanding of the bushfire risk perceptions underlying the evacuation decision-making of the residents in bushfire at-risk communities in south-eastern NSW of Australia.

The paper contributes to the existing knowledge on bushfire risks by providing insights into residents’ perceptions after the catastrophic 2019/2020 Black Summer bushfires. As a qualitative study, it describes bushfire risk perceptions on four themes: likelihood, concern, severity and vulnerability, which is uncommon in many bushfire studies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perspectives of local residents regarding the impact of the long-duration Hazelwood open cut coal mine fire in rural Australia.

A qualitative approach was undertaken involving 27 in-depth interviews with adults who lived in the town of Morwell, immediately adjacent to the coal mine fire.

Participant concerns focussed upon fear and confusion during the event, the perceived health effects of the smoke, anger towards authorities and loss of a sense of community and sense of security. One of the significant ways in which people managed these responses was to normalise the event. The long duration of the event created deep uncertainty which exaggerated the impact of the fire.

Understanding the particular nature of the impact of this event may assist the authors to better understand the ongoing human impact of long-duration disasters in the future.

It is important to provide clear and understandable quality information to residents during and after such disasters.

While there is an extensive literature exploring the direct social and psychological impacts of acute natural disasters, less qualitative research has been conducted into the experiences of longer term critical events.

Reviews the literature of management and information and library service management for 1999.