A two-day intensive training session prepares people and their pets for a natural disaster.

It's the first step in setting up an emergency rescue, and response team for animals in Broome County.

Action news reporter Landon Sears shows us how the course at Cornell Cooperative extension in Binghamton, came with some hands on training.

It started out like an average class, instructors spoke, students took notes.

"it's part of just getting their team ready to go and learning what they need to know to get prepared for it," said Diane Robinson, training instructor.

It could be a hurricane, fire, flood, or earthquake, which could harm or kill family pets.

"It could happen anywhere," said Stephanie Janeczko, Ithaca.

And if a natural disaster was to happen a new emergency rescue and response team for animals would know...

"The most important thing's--Do not evacuate without your pets."

A simple lesson that could save your pets life.

The tough test is to prepare for life after evacuation.

"Animals in a shelter situation is totally different than when you have them at home," said Gene Harvey, Windsor.

After learning the basics...

The relaxed training session took an unexpected twist.

"An evacuation has already started and we have animals that are going to start to arrive in the next 15 or 20 minutes. So we need to get the shelter set up."

"And once that announcement was made all of a sudden, the classroom turned into a real-life emergency and as you can see, chaos ensued," said Action News reporter Landon Sears.

"Help me! Somebody do something," a person yelled.

"You need to calm down," someone said.

The scenario was a flood rescue mission
.
"One of the groups is the public, so they will have people bringing them animals, bringing them supplies. The other group is then in charge of setting up and operating the shelter. They'll be looking at all of the things that could be coming their way," said Robinson.

Robinson says the rescue team passed their test.

But this was just a simulation.

The true test could come in a real disaster.

It's not known when an emergency rescue and response team for animals in Broome County would launch.