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 rescue 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 in 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."
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