“Assistance dog” is a general term for guide dogs, hearing dogs and mobility-service dogs that have received special training to aid social participation of people with visual and other physical disabilities. When assistance dog users evacuate due to a disaster, their dogs evacuate with them.
 
Dr. Yasuhiro Miki, Lecturer of IRIDeS, specializes in the basic research of Disaster Medicine. He is also a veterinarian who has been considering issues related to assistance dogs during disaster evacuation. During the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, it was not officially approved that assistance dogs stay at disaster evacuation centers, but it is now obligatory to accept the “joint evacuation” of assistance dogs and their users at evacuation centers, on the basis of the Act on Assistance Dogs for Physically Disabled Persons enacted in 2002. Since then, it has become a principle that assistance dogs stay with and assist their users even at evacuation centers.

“The issue is that this law is not yet widely known to the public, however,” says Dr. Miki. Not only during disaster evacuation but also at normal times, it is obligatory to accept assistance dogs in common areas, but there have been reports that assistance dogs were not allowed to enter places such as restaurants and hospitals. If an assistance dog is refused to enter a disaster evacuation center, it could become a matter of life or death for the user. Thus Dr. Miki considers that it is important to coordinate and raise awareness among stakeholders at ordinary times. He has been working with the Japanese Service Dog Resource Center to exchange opinions and share the current issues and has also made presentations on assistance dogs and disaster evacuation for other IRIDeS researchers. Dr. Miki says, “Evacuation center manuals of many municipalities still do not stipulate the obligation to accept assistance dogs. One of the effective ways to expand the understanding of assistance dogs should be that those manuals state the obligation.”
 
Actually, however, there is a small number of troubles caused by misunderstanding of assistance dogs, as there are only approx. 1,000 assistance dogs in Japan. On the contrary, issues related to pets during disaster evacuation are more common and have attracted social attention, as their numbers are much greater than ones of assistance dogs. “At the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake, many pet-related problems occurred, and the Ministry of the Environment formulated new guidelines afterwards. Today’s principle is that owners should bring their pets to evacuation centers together, because if pets are left behind at home, it could lead a more serious result. However, it is important that living spaces of humans and pets basically need to be separated at evacuation centers.” If humans and pets stay in the same space at a crowded evacuation center, issues such as allergies and infectious diseases may arise. Pets are different from assistant dogs in that only the latter is required by law to be with their users in the same space at an evacuation center.

Laws and guidelines regarding how to treat assistance dogs and pets during disasters have been developed recently. However, lack of social awareness still prevails. There were also misunderstandings and confusions regarding pets and evacuation during the time of the 2019 Typhoon 19. Overall, Dr. Miki views that the society is moving toward the direction that humans and animals can coexist even during disaster, but he would like to continue his efforts to understand the latest situation and to raise awareness regarding assistance dogs and pets during disaster.

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