Every hurricane, like every fingerprint, is individual.
Charley, virtually all wind and fury, hit an area heavily
populated with seniors and trailer parks, damaging as many as
50% of the homes in southwest Florida. Frances, a slow-moving
Cassandra, was mostly all wet, waterlogging the Sunshine State
but causing far less property damage. Ivan, it appears, was a
shape shifter.
Ivan literally chewed up so much coastline along the Alabama
and Florida panhandle sections of the Gulf of Mexico that
cartographers say maps will need to be redrawn in the storm's
wake. Where did all that sand go? Much of it was redistributed
into people's homes on Gulf barrier islands such as Santa Rosa
and Navarre Beach.
All that shifting sand, as well as other complications, gave
the term "barrier island" a whole new meaning: For days after
Ivan hit on September 16, both residents and rescue workers
were blocked from entering islands off the coast. For example,
it was only late Sunday, September 19, that members of The
HSUS's National Disaster Animal Response Team could enter
Navarre Beach; the bridge to the island was considered
unstable, and authorities limited the number of vehicles that
could cross the lengthy span. Residents were allowed on the
island for the first time on Monday, September 20, but they had
to cross the bridge on foot.
Because our DART members arrived so late on Sunday and
because Santa Rosa County has a dusk-to-dawn curfew, the
assessment team didn't have much time to do its job. But even
in their short time there, they could tell there were animals
to save: cat tracks dotted the sand that covered just about
every square foot of the island, and a lone dog howled in the
distance, clearly hungry and alone.
The DART members returned on Monday, but rescued only a
single cat. They figured other felines were around—the tracks
gave them away—so team member set humane traps. But as Laura
Bevan, incident commander for The HSUS's National DART team,
pointed out Tuesday afternoon, the lack of animal rescues on a
hard-hit island can mean several things.
"These are people who already went through Hurricane Opal in
1995; they witnessed first hand how fierce a Category 3
hurricane can be. I would like to think these residents learned
from that and took all their animals with them this time,"
Bevan said.
"But the reality is that," Bevan continued, "a good number
of pets were likely left behind. We know that people tend to
take their dogs with them when they evacuate, but will often
leave their cats for some reason, and cats will hide after
major disasters; they won't come out and wonder what's going
on, like dogs do. So we have to find them, and that's no easy
task, particularly when the sand is sometimes as high as the
ceiling."
Other disaster teams that combed through Florida's barrier
islands found similarly stark rescue needs; Escambia County
Animal Control rescued only three cats on Pensacola Beach, two
of whom were immediately claimed by their happy owners. The
owner of the third cat was contacted to pick up the animal.
The dark side to the dearth of rescues is painfully obvious
to Bevan. "This was a major storm that essentially shut down
these islands for several days," the incident commander said.
"If there were animals left behind, they could very well be
dead. For any animal, it would have been hard to survive Ivan
and its Category 3 wind and rain."
Serving Up Charley's Leftovers
If the rescues teams haven't been as busy as expected, the
workers coordinating the distribution of food have picked up
the slack. Bevan and others at the Incident Command Post in
DeFuniak Springs worked all hours to bring pet food to the
Florida panhandle from Tampa Bay, where it was leftover from
the rescue and sheltering efforts after Charley. They
ultimately secured two different shippers, a PETCO and the
Florida Department of Forestry, both of which agreed to ship
the dog and cat food. It arrived DeFuniak Springs, where it was
then moved to local shelters, which distributed it to worried
pet owners.
"For pet owners on the barrier islands, it was getting
desperate. So many roads are still impassable to supply trucks,
and people were running out of food for their animals," Bevan
said. "One humane-thinking pet store we heard about actually
gave away pet food for free, and we plan to reimburse them with
our supplies."
Bevan and company are also been working with a PETCO partner
to relocate a number of animals from Santa Rosa County in
Florida. Sun Pet, a PETCO vendor, picked up 19 dogs and 22 cats
from the Santa Rosa shelter and moved them to Atlanta, about
six hours to the north. The Humane Society of Knoxville,
Tennessee has agreed to take most of the animals, and the
reminder will go to Virginia for adoption.
"The goal," Bevan said, "is to open up shelter space in
Santa Rosa, and also give these animals a better chance at
adoption. Given the amount of damage in Santa Rosa, it's
unlikely people will want to adopt an animal anytime soon."
Sweet Homeless Alabama
Like in Florida, the hardest hit areas were the spits of
land in the Gulf of Mexico—in this case Orange Beach and Gulf
Shores. In some areas, complete stretches of beachfront
property were wiped clean. Orange Beach, in fact, was so busy
dealing with other issues that it asked The HSUS National DART
team to handle any requests for wildlife and/or companion
animal rescues.
In all, the DART team in Alabama had rescued or handled more
than 30 animals as of Tuesday, September 21. That total
included five dogs, two gannets, one seagull, and a mildly
injured pelican (who actually shared a room with Dave Pauli,
director of the Northern Rockies Regional
Office who is leading the team in Alabama, until the animal
could be shipped to Orlando for veterinary assessment). The
DART team even helped confine a fallow deer who had escaped the
Gulf Shores Zoo; team members secured the animal in a safe
enclosure and then spent part of Wednesday, September 22,
trying to urge local zoo officials to pick up the wayward
animal.
(Speaking of wayward zoo animals, Alabamans were relieved to
learn that Chuckie, a 1,000-pound alligator who had
escaped the facility after Ivan hit, was recaptured and
returned on Tuesday.)
On Wednesday, the DART team headed back to Orange Beach to
attempt more sea bird rescues in the devastated region. But
Pauli wasn't optimistic that any injured birds might still be
alive on Orange Beach. Not only have the birds been without
treatment for several days, Pauli noted, but there's not a
veterinarian available who can handle the animals.
Pauli and team are also talking to Orange Beach officials
about providing long-term, animal-friendly shelters for those
residents who lost everything. What's more, the DART team was
working the phones to bring more pet food to the area, since
two distribution centers were already empty-handed.
"The good news is that there have been few dog and cat
issues," Pauli said. "It's hard to say why there have been so
few animal issues in an area that was so heavily impacted by
Ivan, but frankly, we'll take it."
