FOUND Act: New law aims to help pets during natural disasters
New law aims to help pets during natural disasters
The FOUND Act -- short for Friends of Oreo Uniting During Disaster -- was introduced in the wake of Oreo, the dog, reuniting with his owner during the Los Angeles wildfires.
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. - With flames behind him and nowhere to turn, an Altadena man leads his horse miles through downtown Pasadena.
Meanwhile, in the Pacific Palisades, fire inches closer to Catherine Kiefer's doorstep, forced to evacuate without finding her beloved kitty, Aggie.
Down the street, Oreo escapes the first responders' rescue, while his frantic owner is out of town.
It's just a minute snapshot of the mayhem during the Los Angeles firestorm that animal rescuers compared to mistakes made 20 years ago in Hurricane Katrina.
Social Compassion founder and President Judie Mancuso is the woman leading the charge.
"People think, 'oh, I'll leave the animal at home. It's more comfortable. We'll probably only be gone for a few hours or a day,'" she said.
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Now they're pushing for change to prevent this from repeating in the future.
It's called the FOUND Act, or Oreo's Law, named after the lost Pomeranian.
"That story kind of represented everything in a nutshell," said Mancuso.
In the trenches and still setting traps in our fire zones for lost cats is Animal Advocacy Network and volunteer Aaron Christensen with some wild stories.
"Four 400-pound plus farm pigs. Two of them were special needs. So that was an interesting one. Obviously, we weren't gonna leave them hanging. I fell in multiple koi ponds. I'm the one that actually helped with the 140-pound tortoise. So chasing chickens on quarter-acre, half-acre properties is always an adventure also," Christensen said.
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"When propane's popping, cars are popping, people are screaming," he added.
Assembly Bill 478 would establish a clear evacuation plan, create a centralized database for lost and found pets, and make it 90 days to adopt an animal found during a natural disaster instead of the current 72 hours - so animals like these don't have to suffer - the horse taken in by Pasadena Humane, Aggie saved two weeks ago near her home in bare bones, and Oreo, found after five days living off the rubble.
"When I was a little girl and I love you know the family dog so much and I would look into her eyes and I just felt this connection this empathy for her and the fact that animals are voiceless and they can't speak for themselves to get help and to tell us you know if someone's being cruel to them. So they are truly the underdogs," Mancuso said.
Animal rescuers are hoping this bill becomes Oreo's Law by September, and they're hoping it goes from being a state law to a federal law, possibly in the future.
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The Source: Information for this story is from interviews with Judie Mancuso and Aaron Christensen on March 31, 2025, and the California Legislative Information website.