The importance of microchips - Lessons learned from Katrina

Significant disaster planning prevented the nearly unimaginable June EF-5 tornado that flattened a 6-mile long and half-mile wide swath in Joplin, Mo., from being worse. The Missouri authorities had been fine-tuning their disaster response for years, and it paid off. What we learned about people being unwilling to leave their pets during Hurricane Katrina about pets was applied: Some emergency shelter space accommodated pets.

Although it’s painful to contemplate what could have been worse in what the National Weather Service calls “the deadliest [tornado] since modern recordkeeping began in 1950,” there was one area lacking in which people could have prevented much heartache: microchips.

About 1,300 pets ended up in the Joplin Humane Society. The trick was reuniting them with their owners – a difficult task given that all but a handful of the pets did not have an ID tag or a microchip. Seen as an unnecessary expense by some people, a tiny microchip and its one-time cost could have saved a lot of worry and grief.

Read the article on The Pet Connection Blog