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 Bernard Unti
Today, officials of the Louisiana SPCA and The HSUS received approval from federal and state authorities to transfer 400 animals out of the emergency shelter set up at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center in Gonzales, Louisiana.
This agreement was a literal lifeline for hundreds of animals brought in during the day by The HSUS Disaster Animal Response Team (DART) and others who pressed on with their search and rescue missions in flood-ravaged New Orleans and surrounding areas. The removal of obstacles to an efficient and steady relocation process also set the stage for the continued evacuation of animals from the city in the days ahead.
The agreement marked a resolution of tensions over the viability of Lamar Dixon as a temporary holding facility for the exodus of animals from the stricken landscape of the Big Easy. It was a hopeful sign on a weekend that saw the nation sharpen focus on the harsh and self-defeating outcome of state and federal disaster protocols that forced people to choose between their personal safety and the lives of their pets.
This afternoon, Wayne Pacelle, President and CEO of The HSUS, who on Saturday night appeared on Larry King Live to make a direct appeal for complete federal and state cooperation in the rescue effort, traveled to Louisiana to meet with The HSUS staff members and other responders in the field.
Soldiering On
It was the most closely watched race this weekend, this ongoing push to relay the names and locations of animals from the database maintained at The HSUS headquarters in Washington, DC to the field workers on the ground in Louisiana. On Saturday and Sunday, in the shambles that New Orleans has become, animal care and control personnel and volunteers from around the nation acted both creatively and decisively to find, rescue, and sustain animals struggling to survive almost two weeks after Katrina flogged the city. Those animals they could reach and collect, they saved. Those they could not catch, they did their best to feed and water, to keep them alive and give them a chance to survive until the next attempt at rescue.
Only a week or two ago, the majority of men and women on these patrols labored on more modest stages, in much smaller contexts. In communities throughout the United States, they were investigating complaints, providing basic animal care instructions, writing cruelty citations, giving school presentations, and rounding up stray dogs and cats for the animal care and control agencies that employed them.
Now, in contrast, they are the main players in an extraordinary drama, racing into New Orleans each day to conduct land and water rescues. There, relying on information provided by anxious evacuees desperate to see their animals saved, rescue workers enter homes, apartment houses, and other buildings with single-minded purpose—to spirit animals safely away from a storm-stricken landscape of waste, destruction, and death.
Shelter from the Storm
As relief and rescue work went forward, animal sheltering professionals under the coordinated command of The HSUS Northern Rockies Regional Office Director Dave Pauli and Louisiana SPCA director Laura Maloney continued to improvise solutions to the staggering challenges of housing and caring for so many animals. Managers of the Lamar-Dixon facility granted the organizations the use of a third horse barn earlier in the week, but by Saturday the structures allocated to the operation were crowded with animals. Harried volunteers worked around the clock to keep the crates clean, to walk the dogs, to keep the animals watered and fed.
This morning, in anticipation of a busy week of animal rescue, the groups working together in Gonzales focused on implementation of standard operating procedures for the entire facility, trying to rationalize an inherently chaotic process—the steady influx of hundreds of animals from a variety of sources, including the The HSUS DART teams and others who brought rescued animals to Lamar Dixon at a steady pace throughout the day.
Random Acts of Kindness
There were further signs of hope in the efforts of countless individual emergency responders, who in their own way sought to subvert policies restricting their aid to the animal population of New Orleans. Reports of guardsmen, policemen, and others who worked to assist animals and animal rescue teams came steadily to light through the weekend. They took animals on board their own boats and vehicles. They sought out animal care and control personnel to get their assistance with evacuating families whose members refused to abandon their pets. They placed animals into better positions so that rescuers might see and retrieve them. They laid down food and water where they could.
With these actions, such individuals, too, became members of the army of the kind that has descended upon New Orleans. It was the lesson of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, that if there is a rule, no matter what the rule, there is always an exception to it. Addressing the challenges of disaster and protocol as they arise, animal rescuers and others soldiered on, urgently, in solidarity with endangered animals, with grief-stricken owners, and with one another.
Tim Carman contributed reporting to this article. Bernard Unti, senior policy advisor and special assistant to the president at The HSUS, received his doctorate in U.S. history in 2002 from American University. His book, Protecting All Animals: A Fifty-Year History of The Humane Society of the United States, is available from Humane Society Press.
