By Carrie Allan
September 6, 11:25 p.m.
Hurricane Katrina didn't save her wrath solely for New Orleans. She unleashed the brunt of her winds on Mississippi and Alabama. Small towns along the Gulf Coast weren't flooded—they were flattened. Many of the towering southern pines that lined the highways from Louisiana into Mississippi are snapped like matchsticks. Huge swathes of broken forests can be seen more than 50 miles inland. The tangle of torn foliage at the sides of the road is eerily silent, as though the birds don't yet trust the shelter of the trees that splintered so easily in Katrina's path.
But though the birds are keeping quiet, many animals are here—pets, farm animals, even captive and exotic wildlife—and many in need of rescue and relief. The HSUS disaster response team members working in Mississippi have been making their way to the coast, deploying more widely as state authorities have allowed citizens and relief workers to enter devastated areas.
Setting up initial command operations in Jackson, the HSUS teams helped establish a animal-friendly shelter for evacuees at the Coliseum, creating a animal-friendly zone where people could visit with their animals during the day.
Teams moved south to Hattiesburg this past weekend, and have been bringing in animals they rescue for clean-up, veterinary checks and treatment, and temporary housing. They now have a smaller staging area at the animal shelter in Gautier, only a few miles from the coast of the Mississippi Sound, and are reaching more of the animals who were stranded in communities virtually obliterated by the storm.
On Tuesday, teams were rescuing animals in Gulfport and Biloxi. Laura Bevan and Diane Webber of The HSUS's Disaster Animal Response Team (DART) used local media, getting onto local radio and TV programs, to inform survivors of the national hotline 1-800-HUMANE-1 if they have pets in need of rescue.
Rescuing Companions
"There are lots of dogs running loose, some litters of kittens," says Bevan. "That's a lot of what we're seeing, and we're expecting to see a lot more. We just want to let people in the towns know we're here to help."
On Monday, the Mississippi teams rescued 31 dogs, 17 cats, 5 kittens, 2 rabbits, and 4 horses.
One team was able to pick up a dog who had been washed by the storm surge waters into someone's attic and then stranded there. The woman who owned the house was elderly; she was able to slip some food and water up to the attic for the dog, but was unable to go upstairs to carry him out.
Last week, team members helped rescue some of the animals left alive at the Humane Society of South Mississippi in Gulfport. The shelter sat directly next to a sewage treatment plant, and when the water rose, the plant's systems overflowed.
The shelter was over four feet deep in water, says Bevan, and many of the animals being kept in the lower kennels drowned. Demonstrating amazing tenacity, 130 of the animals survived. The shelter had most of their adoptable animals in the higher cage banks. Disaster team members from The HSUS and other organizations were able to rescue the animals, decontaminating them and rushing them to veterinary treatment. Animals healthy enough have now been transported to shelters in Birmingham and in the Northeast for adoption.
One of the teams working on the coast this week was flagged down by a desperate pet owner who had been stranded in her home without enough insulin for her diabetic cat. The owner made do by giving the cat only a quarter of the dose, but was terrified that her pet was going to die. The team's veterinarian, Blair Jones, advised the woman that she was doing the right thing in rationing. Later, she wrote out a prescription for insulin and disaster responders Jennifer Hobgood and Consie Von Gontard delivered the medicine to the grateful pet owner.
Animals Saved from Starvation at Roadside "Zoo"
One of the Mississippi teams responded to calls from a captive wildlife facility in Covington County, a roadside zoo that struggled to meet the needs of its captive wildlife population long before Katrina's arrival. The teams first assessed the post-hurricane condition of the zoo. They found 15 big cats (lions, tigers, cougars), a handful of parrots, a few wolves, and several poisonous snakes (including a cobra) in unlocked cages.
The roadside zoo had run out of fuel for its generator, so the supply of meat for the larger predators had rotted. The animals had not eaten for a week, worrisome because of the animals' suffering but also because the zoo had no perimeter fence. The team provided water and fuel on the spot and came back later with food, more water, and 140 pounds of a special food blend for carnivores.
In another case, the private owner of a bear also received a helping hand from the team. The trough the animal used for bathing—and more importantly, for keeping cool—had been damaged in the storm. The bear was overheating. The HSUS responders brought hoses and water to cool him down while they strategized on patching the trough.
Roadside zoos and private ownership of wildlife is always cause for concern, but disasters like Katrina magnify the inherent problems of captive wildlife.
"These cases just make it clear that when anyone owns or takes responsibility for a large number of animals, especially wildlife, who have much more complicated needs than dogs or cats, a disaster plan is essential," says The HSUS's Melissa Forberg, who is directing operations at the Hattiesburg staging area. "You have to be more disaster savvy than the average person."
Teams Rescue Often-Overlooked Farm Animals
Even animals whose distress has nothing to do with Katrina have benefited from the response team's presence here. On Sunday night, a cattle truck overturned on a highway down the road from the staging area, and some cows escaped and ran off into the brush. A state policeman, knowing he had reliable help down the road, called on rescuers.
"We were out spotlighting cows in the woods," says Von Gontard. "It was certainly the first blue-lights-flashing police-escorted cow wrangle I've done."
The team managed to capture one of the cows, and turned the hurricane debris to their advantage.
"There was a hole in one of the roadside fences and so we took some of the branches and small trunks of trees that had come down, and wove them through the hole to make sure he couldn't get back onto the road," says Valerie Burke, a responder from Pinellas, Florida.
It's not difficult to speculate what would have happened to the cow if the rescue team had not been on-site. She might have wandered back onto the highway, creating the potential for more loss of life (both human and bovine). More likely, the cow would have come to the end advocated by the local expert who showed up Tuesday afternoon as the team was trying to capture two additional cows.
"Who's got the gun?" he asked in puzzlement. "We just need to shoot the sumbitch."
In the aftermath of so many deaths, The HSUS disaster response team is working to create better options.
Carrie Allan is the associate editor of Animal Sheltering Magazine at The HSUS.
