SEQUIM — One key aspect of rescuing humans after a catastrophe is to rescue their pets.

So learned a larger-than-expected crowd of volunteers in the Peninsula’s first Emergency Animal Sheltering Training conference.

“We were going to open it to the public, but then it filled up,” said Karen Goschen, the Sequim administrative services director who worked with the Humane Society of the United States to organize the training.

During the two-day conference at the Guy Cole Convention Center over the weekend, leaders divided some 90 participants into groups and gave each a scenario: earthquake, storm and flood, tsunami or wildfire.

Each group devised a response plan and learned how to handle companion animals — horses, dogs, cats, even exotic pets — throughout the chaos that can follow a catastrophe.

‘Depend on your own’

“In an isolated area like this, you’ve got to depend on your own people to respond after a disaster,” said participant Chris Cornell of Sequim.

Peninsula residents cannot count on help coming quickly from Seattle or elsewhere.

Cornell, director of the therapy dog organization Olympic Gentle Paws, brought seven therapy dogs in for the conference’s hands-on sessions.

When communities prepare themselves for a disaster, they had better include animal rescue in their plans, the nation learned after Hurricane Katrina stranded thousands of pets.

“It’s not just about animals,” added Humane Society of the United States’ Inga Gibson.

A response plan that leaves out pets is “jeopardizing people’s lives, including the first responders”‘ since pet owners may refuse to evacuate, requiring police and firefighters to come searching for them.

“Helping animals is supporting people by taking care of what is important to them. The human-animal bond is never more important to people than in situations of extreme stress,” the conference’s manual noted.

“I would stay at my house if my pets [four cats, two dogs and various foster animals] couldn’t come with me,” said Christina Curth of Port Angeles.

Curth is manager of the Clallam County Humane Society shelter, so she has a truck and trailer with which she’d transport her companions away from a disaster.

Curth urges pet owners to assemble emergency kits for their animals, just as they would do for themselves.