No Pet or Their Person Left Behind: Increasing the Disaster Resilience of Vulnerable Groups through Animal Attachment, Activities and Networks

Kirrilly Thompson, Danielle Every, Sophia Rainbird, Victoria Cornell, Bradley Smith
and Joshua Trigg

May 7, 2014

Simple Summary: The potential for reconfiguring pet ownership from a risk factor to a
protective factor for natural disaster survival has been recently proposed. But how might
this resilience-building proposition apply to members of the community who are already
considered vulnerable? This article addresses this important question by synthesizing
information about what makes seven particular groups vulnerable, the challenges to
increasing their resilience and how animals figure in their lives. It concludes that animal
attachment could provide a novel conduit for accessing, communicating with and motivating
vulnerable people to engage in resilience building behaviors that promote survival and
facilitate recovery.

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