Emergencies, accidents, and injuries can occur at any time, without warning. The ability to respond to emergencies is a responsibility of the UMBC community to prepare for, respond to, mitigate and recover from various critical incidents, major events, emergencies, or disasters that may affect lives, property, and the institution of UMBC. (UMBC Emergency Response Plan, 2019).
The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals as well as the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare describe the requirements of disaster planning as well as offer resources for institutions such as UMBC to take into account the well-being of animals and personnel during unexpected events.
Facility personnel and animal users should be familiar with UMBC’s procedures in the event of emergencies. Principal investigators, facility managers, animal caretakers have a shared have shared responsibilities to follow facility standard operating procedures of appropriate husbandry and health monitoring of research laboratory animals. The UMBC attending veterinarian is available any anytime with questions or concerns. Any variation to the status of animals must be reported immediately to the veterinarian and the IACUC.
Additional resources can be found on the UMBC Environmental Safety and Health webpage, the UMBC Human Resources site as well as the disaster plan response for animal facilities in the 2011 UMBC Emergency Response Plan.