By Bernard Unti

September 6, 8:40 p.m.

Today, on their third day of access to the cheerless city of New Orleans, members of HSUS's Disaster Animal Rescue Teams (DART) helped to carry dozens of animals to safety, taking them out of houses, picking them up in the streets, and collecting them from displaced evacuees leaving the city. 

One ground-based DART team rescued at least nineteen cats in break-and-enter operations undertaken with permission from authorities. Fourteen other teams were operating across Mississippi and Louisiana.

The animal exodus from New Orleans works this way: After the day's patrols end, rescued animals are taken to a triage point outside the careworn city in caravans of small vehicles. There, ailing animals are stabilized, with those in good condition being moved to the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center in Gonzales, the improvised headquarters of the Louisiana SPCA, The HSUS, and their rescue partners—and a facility that lends itself well to the staging of a large-scale animal rescue. The sicker animals are currently sent to a veterinary hospital at Louisiana State University.

Today's good news came even as the story of New Orleans' pets—a new kind of disaster in the making—began to win increased attention from the national media, underscoring the terrible realities of disaster response plans that do not include proper provisions for the evacuation of people with their companion animals. Anderson Cooper and Oprah were planning to focus on the topic in special reports, and HSUS President and CEO Wayne Pacelle was scheduled to appear on Larry King Live on Thursday night, September 8.

Still, as serious rescue work began, time was a shadow that hung dismally over the lives of New Orleans' pets. Lost, abandoned, stray, or locked inside the houses, offices, and other structures of a battered city, food and water running out, they were trapped in time and place.

Gearing Up, Taking Action

While animal control officers and other rescue workers took to the flooded streets of New Orleans, The HSUS continued its mobilization for large-scale rescue efforts in the days ahead. The HSUS Disaster Call Center logged thousands of telephone calls and emails from the public, including hundreds of requests for animal rescue in the New Orleans vicinity. Staff organization-wide dropped their normal duties to help, searching for boats, trucks, crates, carriers, supplies, food, and other essential items for transport and operations in the impact zones of Louisiana and Mississippi. 

Senior officials also made the decision to rapidly expand The HSUS's personnel commitment beyond the 25 professional staff and 200-plus additional team members and others under its command in the damage zones.

Bridging Troubled Waters

At least some of the recent rescues were undertaken in boats, as the observable gave way to the definite: It would be a long time before the waters receded. 

On another day in Louisiana, the airboat might have been taking tourists through a bayou swamp to gape at alligators. But on this day, it sailed down the flooded streets with animal rescue workers and a rifle-toting guard on board. In front yards, where, on a normal day in September, residents might have sat in their lawn chairs, smoking cigars or talking with the neighbors, men and women in waders moved from house to house, armed with address lists for animals locked inside and authorization from the Louisiana SPCA to break into houses to free them. The animals they found alive were placed in carriers and taken to safety.

Kathy Milani, HSUS videographer, saw guards turn over a dog to rescue workers after they had cleaned him up. "They've seen what these animals have gone through and they're happy to get them out of here," she said.

Milani, who has been on both boat and ground patrols, also said that citizens were proving to be a reliable source of information on the whereabouts of animals.

"They come up to us and tell us of other neighbors harboring dogs and cats," she said. Milani also noted that a number of the rescued animals come from people who are finally complying with authorities' requests to evacuate the city. "These late-stage evacuees are usually ready to leave once they receive a guarantee of 'safe passage' for their animals."

In this respect, animal rescue workers are providing essential support for authorities seeking complete evacuation of the devastated zones.

A Hotline as Lifeline

As rescue efforts continued in Louisiana and Mississippi, the flood of calls to the HSUS's Disaster Call Center continued. Throughout the Labor Day weekend, in three shifts, staff and volunteers came to the office, some taking double turns, to handle the flow of calls and e-mails streaming in.

"If we were not here, these people would have nobody to talk to, nobody to take down their information, nobody to provide the right advice," said John Snyder, senior director of companion animals for The HSUS. "The relief agencies and law enforcement do not have time to take these calls, let alone to go out and do something for the animals."

Part of that something is cataloguing all available details about the animals of New Orleans—their names, their locations, their temperaments, their ages, their medical conditions, and more. Since Friday, at HSUS headquarters, staff members have labored to build this roadmap for rescue, drawing together information submitted by hundreds of evacuees anxiously seeking to make right what Katrina made wrong.

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.