Animals Rescued Louisiana & Mississippi |
Confirmed Totals to Date: 3815 - Dogs & Cats: 2529
- Horses: 121
- Other Animals: 1165
Updated: September 11, 8:00 a.m. |
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By Carrie Allan
September, 11 11:03 a.m.
While The HSUS Disaster Animal Response Teams span out across the Gulf Coast, working against the clock to locate and rescue animals, Laura Bevan and Diane Webber, co-coordinators of The HSUS's disaster response teams operations in Mississippi, are on the road to Waveland, Mississippi to establish a site to begin treating and receiving animals—strays, and those pets who stricken people can no longer keep.
Since arriving in Mississippi right after the hurricane passed, The HSUS disaster teams have established help sites for people and pets in Jackson, then Hattiesburg, then Gautier, then Gulfport.
On the drive into the emergency operations center (EOC) for Hancock County, the sheriff at the checkpoint outside stops them.
"Have your people picked up a pair of Jack Russell terriers?" he asks.
Bevan is pretty sure that the rescuers down the road in Gautier did pick up a couple of Jack Russells, but she doesn't want to get the man's hopes up without confirmation from her teams. She tells him about The HSUS's facility in Hattiesburg, where all of Mississippi's rescued animals are heading for treatment and housing, and advises he give them a call to check for the dogs.
"Our local vet—the one we got left—lost his dogs," the sheriff tells Bevan. "His wife got blown out of their house and they found her in a tree. Her mother died and they can't find her dad. She's pretty banged up. It sure would be great if you guys have their dogs." He shakes his head. "They really don't need any more stress right now."
Welcome to Hancock County, home of a new kind of understatement.
Picking Up the Pieces
Welcome to Hancock County, where the ruins of boats and houses and cars lie in the median strips of highways, washed there by the 30-foot storm surge that hit the coast. Where the yards are full of rubble and makeshift crosses jutting up from where people's bodies were found. Where the cute houses and condos that once lined the beachfront have simply vanished, leaving concrete foundations that no longer support anything but debris—toys, clothes, overturned cars, pieces of houses. Where a crew near the highway is pulling a body out of a treetop where the tide stranded it, and where the business bearing a sign advertising "water-tight roofing" no longer has a roof.
Bevan and Webber have come to the county EOC to get permission to come in and establish a temporary animal shelter in Waveland. Katrina washed away the city's shelter with 57 dogs inside of it. HSUS responders have been getting reports that stray animals are everywhere here, and have been trying to get into the county for days to set up a safe place for people to bring animals and to distribute pet food and supplies to those who need them.
On their way into the evening briefing, an officer with the U.S. Coast Guard notices their HSUS shirts, and asks if they have brought any birdseed with them. He hasn't been able to stop working long enough to get any for his cockatiels and is worried that their food stick is running short.
At the briefing, responders handling every aspect of the county's crisis stand to give their reports—hazardous materials being tested and secured, roads being cleared. People sheltered at a hospital down the road are having increased respiratory problems because all the mud that washed up is turning into dust now and getting into their lungs.
The man from law enforcement says that the military checkpoints are running more efficiently, and tries to lighten the mood by informing everyone of a sign of returning normalcy: A policeman made a DUI arrest in the city today. A low chuckle circles through the room, but the brief respite from grimness vanishes moments later, when the responder from body recovery stands to report that another corpse was found today, bringing the total to 42. Only 40 percent of the county has been searched.
"It's Like a War Zone"
Byron Ladner has spent the past week burying animals, many of them horses. Working animal control for Hancock county, Ladner handles an area that was largely farmland, much of which went underwater when Katrina hit the coast.
In the harsh light of a conference room down the hall after the main briefing, Ladner's eyes are red and tired. He's got the look of a man who's seen way too much, way too quickly, and with way too little sleep to process it.
"I never imagined this. It baffles me," he says. "It's like a war zone—the stuff I'm seeing, it's getting to me."
Even in his exhaustion, though, he manages a rueful smile at his own outfit: a camouflage baseball cap and a gray Budweiser t-shirt. "I don't even drink beer. How did I end up wearing this?" A horse lover and owner, Ladner's been out since then trying to deal with the large animal problems—drowned cattle and horses everywhere, others loose and roaming onto the highways, others injured and terrified. He's desperate to get the animals. Even now, a crisis looms.
The area is marshy as is, and when the saltwater rose, it killed all the edible vegetation, so the cows and horses have little to eat. A disaster responder from Day's End Farm Horse Rescue, working as part of The HSUS team, came in to rescue a horse who was badly injured yesterday.
Currently, 24 rescued horses are being cared for at the Hattiesburg facility.
Ladner and Charles Schwartz, who does animal control for the city of Waveland itself, are coping with the stray pet issue as well. It's not just the sweet lost pets roaming the streets, or the owners who are desperately searching for them. Trained guard dogs without any owners or anything to guard. Strays.
"The dogs are all still here, and they're loose, and packing up," says Schwartz.
Schwartz himself has already taken in two sweet but injured pit bulls, one with a bad leg and one with a terribly swollen face. He's been trying to find veterinary care for them, but all but one of the town's small animal vets lived below Interstate 10—and nearly everything that was below Interstate 10 is now in the ocean.
Filling in the Gaps
Laura Bevan is losing her voice. First it went rough, then completely hoarse. But she uses the rasp of it that's left to tell Radner and Schwartz that The HSUS is here to help.
"We can get you some good animal control officers in to help with the aggressive dogs," she says. "Do you need a large animal vet? We can get you hooked up with folks from VMAT."
Within minutes, the group is out on the road in the dark to try to check out a possible site for a new makeshift shelter in the destroyed city.
It's a part of the disaster response that isn't much covered, but it's one of the most fundamental. Rescuing animals is a great thing, and every day, hundreds of animals are being pulled from destroyed communities along the coast. But once they've been rescued, where do they go—in towns where the only shelters have been leveled by the storm?
Bevan and Webber are both disaster veterans. While their rescue teams search the counties for hurt and lost animals, they've been doing another kind of crucial work: They've been getting into these devastated communities, finding out what they need for their animals, and creating the fundamental structures necessary to meet those needs for shelter, medical care, and food.
They've been asking the right questions: What do you need? What do the animals need? Do your citizens need pet food for their animals? Do the animals need veterinary care or temporary housing? Are there aggressive animals on the streets, and if so, where? Have you seen any stray animals who we can send our teams in for? What are the security issues? Where can we establish a temporary facility for emergency vet care and holding?
The Waveland site, like the others in Mississippi, will be essential in addressing the needs Bevan and Webber are doggedly cataloging.
This is not sexy work. It involves a lot of talking, as Bevan's disappearing voice attests. It involves a lot of driving, from one smashed-up town to another, through badly damaged, unmarked (the road signs have blown away) and often unsafe areas to find each community's EOC to get permission to operate within the community.
It involves finding a physical site where animal care is even possible—no small task in areas where the buildings that haven't been totally destroyed often creak and sway in a small gust of wind. It involves an endless series of phone calls and endless stacks of paperwork and red tape and hardly any sleep. But all this tedious, exhausting planning is what allows the other work—the rescuing of animals, the saving of lives, the rebuilding of shelters and their communities—to begin to happen.
Carrie Allan is the associate editor of Animal Sheltering Magazine at The HSUS.
