The summary page -

When Hurricane Katrina struck, the damage was unprecedented. The loss of human life was heartbreaking.

The situation for animals was heartbreaking too, especially for those who care about pets greatly. Some of those folks lived in New Orleans and refused to evacuate because they could not take their pets with them, and some undoubtedly lost their own lives as a result. People were not allowed to take their pets with them to human shelters, or on transports out of the city. Some people were forcibly separated from their pets.

After the hurricane's forces subsided, animal rescue groups began moving into the area to see how they could help. Animal rescue was allowed in after human rescues had been completed.

It soon became clear that the large, national groups such as the HSUS (Humane Society of the United States) would be the only ones who could manage the numbers of animals requiring rescue and shelter. Smaller groups also began rescue and shelter operations, but with the number of animals needing rescue unknown - but clearly huge - it would take enormous efforts and the resources of very large organizations to help as many animals as possible.

Two major staging areas were set up as temporary shelters, under the regulation of the state veterinarians of each state. The first, in Hattiesburg in Mississippi, was to shelter animals found or surrendered by owners in Mississippi. This shelter is called Hattiesburg. The second, at an expo center named Lamar-Dixon in a town named Gonzales, would shelter the animals in desperate need in Louisiana, primarily from New Orleans. The second shelter is called Gonzales or Lamar-Dixon.

Neither shelter could provide care for the numbers of animals that soon began to arrive. By the end of September, over 7,000 animals had been admitted to these two shelters. They were the two largest animal shelters in the United States, and maybe the world. The animal rescue efforts that brought the animals in to these shelters was like nothing that has ever been seen before. Previously, even with major hurricanes, hundreds of animals needed shelter. With this hurricane, hundreds of animals were arriving every single day. At their height, Lamar-Dixon housed nearly 2,000 animals, and Hattiesburg about 1,300. At our shelter, we house about 40 animals.

The state of Louisiana decreed that the Lamar-Dixon facility could house no more than 1,300 animals at a time. Desperate to continue to rescue the animals stranded in New Orleans with no way for their frantic people to reach them, a plan was formed. Animals would be shipped out from both Hattiesburg and Lamar-Dixon to other animal shelters around the country. These shelters would look for the pets' families and try to reunite them. National organizations would pay to ship pets back to be reunited with their families if they could be identified. If the original family was not found, the pets would be made available for adoption. Pets from Louisiana and Mississippi soon began arriving in states like Florida, Oregon, Nebraska, and Maine. This freed up space at Hattiesburg and Lamar-Dixon for newly rescued pets to arrive.

People who had evacuated without their pets, or lost their pets, reported in to national databases by phone or email. Rescuers in the shelters compiled lists of addresses to search for left behind pets, and began feeding other pets in the field. As time went on, the condition of pets grew worse and worse.

Because both shelters were designed as transfer stations and not permanent care facilites, both are shutting down. Hattiesburg was down to about 50 animals as of September 30th. Lamar-Dixon, by order of the state of Louisiana, stopped admitting pets to the shelter on the same date, and will have shipped out all the rescued pets and shut down the facility by October 15th.

Because the scale of this disaster was unprecedented, there was not a cohesive plan in place for how to manage this many animals. Many things were, by necessity, figured out as days went by. Nothing is ideal.

In the end, over 7,000 animals were sheltered at these two facilities. They weren't animal shelters, just temporary facilites set up in horse barns and manned by volunteers. When there weren't enough volunteers who could do something, it didn't get done. There were critical shortages, especially of veterinarians, veterinary technicians, and experienced animal handlers. With pit bull fighting a popular 'sport' in New Orleans, some of these dogs were not easy to handle in the best of times. These were the worst of times. Hopefully there will be some lessons learned, by the government, the human shelters, and the animal rescue community.

Here you will find the experiences of the folks from our shelter who responded to the desperate call for experienced animal handlers. We will tell you what we saw and did. We will tell you how you can help, too.

How you can help animals in a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina

1) Have a disaster plan in place for all your pets. Right now. Doesn't matter where you live, you must have one. Do you have carriers, medication, food for them all? Where will you take them if you cannot take them with you to a human shelter? If everyone in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina had this planned out, many more pets would be alive today. For more information on disaster planning for your pets, visit the HSUS here.

2) "The Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act, H.R. 3858 (PETS Act), would require state and local authorities to include pets and service animals in their disaster evacuation plans. You could help save thousands of people and pets from anguish—even loss of life—during the next major disaster, just by asking your U.S. Representative to support this bill." Please pass the word and support this bill to protect pets in future disasters. For more information, visit here.

3) If you are interested in helping animals in a disaster, you should get disaster training now. Disaster training will allow you to be trained and useful immediately when disaster of any kind strikes. For information on training or volunteering to help animals in a disaster, visit:
Massachusetts Animal Coalition
Humane Society of the United States
American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
If you are a veterinarian, veterinary technician, or person with animal handling experience (animal shelter or animal control experience, for example), you are desperately needed in any disaster affecting animals.

4) Donate money to an organization of your choice to help in a disaster. Money is the single best way to help; it can be used for whatever today's greatest need is. Choose an organization that is helping as many animals as possible, or one close to your heart.

5) Help locally, even if the disaster is far away. In a major disaster, shelters from all across the country will be helping the disaster area. Your local shelter needs your help (during a disaster and always). Your help can free up shelter staff to assist the disaster area better.

6) Adopt! Not just a disaster pet - adopt any pet in a shelter! Folks are fighting over adopting Katrina pets - everyone wants one. For every Katrina pet, thousands more languish in shelters all across the country. They all need homes. Millions of pets are still euthanized in the United States every year because there are just too many. Don't overlook your local pets in need.

7) Send supplies to the disaster area, ONLY IF they are specifically - and currently - requested by an organization working in the area. Sending other things, or sending things late, can actually hinder the rescue and shelter effort, as volunteers are diverted from animal care to unloading, sorting, and storing unneeded supplies. Please only send what is asked for at the time you are shipping supplies. Money is a much better choice; even if you are sending things that are needed today, they may not be by the time your shipment arrives.

8) Don't complain about what's going on, do something about it. Go and volunteer. If you can't, help someone else by helping pay their way. Or send money. Until you have been there, you shouldn't comment or complain because you can't understand what it's like. It is like nothing you have ever seen or done, and things that make perfect sense at home are impossible in a disaster area. Everyone is doing the best they can.

9) Give your own family (human and animal) a hug and be grateful for what you have.

Lamar-Dixon - triage trials & tribulations

I transferred myself to Lamar-Dixon on Wednesday, September 28. It seemed like the situation at Hattiesburg was under control, and reports from other folks who'd moved down to Lamar-Dixon indicated that it was not under control there. This turned out to be true.

While Hattiesburg was in the winding-down phase - no longer admitting animals, with only about 500 animals at the shelter - Lamar-Dixon was still actively admitting hundreds of animals per day. Hundreds were also being shipped out every day to shelters around the nation. The health of many of the new arrivals was poor - it had been a month now since the hurricane.

We arrived at 2 pm, and I started working on the 3-12 shift. I reported to the VMAT (Veterinary Medical Assistance Team, a veterinary group that deploys to emergency situations) to ask if they could use my veterinary technician skills. The answer was yes, yes, yes. I was assigned to Intakes/Triage. I'd be teamed with a veterinarian and we'd be giving new arrivals their vaccines, microchips and 'brief' examinations.

Rescuers go to the city in the morning, bringing food, water, and crates with them. They're given a list of addresses before they go; the list is of pets reported left behind by their owners (the owners have either phoned or emailed). They also investigate other animal activity (loose animals on the streets, barking heard in houses) and try to work with law enforcement to find other animals that may be in need. To read a good journal from a team working in the field, click here. Some of it's depressing, and some of it's graphic, so know that before you read. There's another one here, less graphic.

Search & Rescue folks loading up supplies early in the morning - they're out from 6am until 8pm

The rescuers collect animals as they go - sometimes all they find, sometimes (when it's full at Lamar-Dixon) only the ones whose situation is dangerous. If they fill the crates in their vehicles before the end of the day, or have a critical case, they can bring the animals to an 18 wheeler truck with an air conditioned trailer that's stationed in the city. There is a vet to do emergency care (give fluids, cool down heatstroke cases), and the animals are crated up to await the evening's journey to Lamar-Dixon. If they aren't full, they keep the animals in their own vehicles until the evening. It's critical that their vehicles have functioning air conditioning. A few days before I arrived, the a/c failed on a truck. It was very, very bad.

The line up of Search & Rescue vehicles waiting to be unloaded at night. These pictures are dark - it's nighttime when the animals come in. At least it's cooler now, probably down to 90.

There's a curfew in the city, and all rescues are supposed to be back at Lamar-Dixon by 8pm. The rescuers have had a hard time tearing themselves away, and they've been coming in later and later. The night before I got there, this resulted in the Intake teams working until 2am - and they still weren't done - they just stopped until the morning. After you've been working at top speed for 10 hours, you're just too tired to do anything properly. It's not safe for you or the pets. People told me stories about working with folks so tired they couldn't make sense of anything - that's no way to provide medical care. On the 28th, Lamar-Dixon closed the gates on time and refused to admit anyone arriving after 8pm. As you can imagine, this caused a great deal of anger. As with many things that happened there, I'm not sure what I think about this. On one hand, we couldn't keep doing intakes until 2am. On the other, shutting pets outside the gates.....there's no good answer.

So, intakes. The vehicles drive up. The 18 wheelers come in with up to 150 pets on board. Animal Control vehicles pull up. Mini vans and SUVs pull up. Even regular cars. They've all got some variation of "SPCA Animal Rescue" painted on the windows. They've all got pets inside that were pulled from the city. They wait in line, because animals can only be offloaded as fast as the vet teams process them. There is usually 2-3 vet teams doing dogs, and 1-3 doing cats.

As each pet comes off the vehicle, the rescuer gives information about where the pet was found. Some pets come in with mail or bills from the home they were removed with - this gives the owner's name and address, and it gets put right in the pet's plastic folder. Each pet is assigned a handler, who will walk them through the vet stations, then take them off to their new home in whichever barn is being loaded up at the moment. The dogs have their Polaroid pictures taken - the cats, in carriers, have theirs taken by the vet team while they are out for their checkup. They are assigned ID numbers and given paperwork. Paperwork seems like a unnecessary thing when you look at a truck filled with 100 animals who want to get off - now - but with more than 1,000 animals in residence, it's vital. And, figuring out exactly where they came from could be their only ticket back to their family.

The constant cry of "HANDLER! HANDLER!" rings throughout the intake/triage area as pets are unloaded, and the unloaders seek handlers to take the pets. The need for experienced animal handlers is critical here. Some of these pets were not nice to people a month ago, before the hurricane. But even the ones that were nice then, are freaked out by this point. Some have stories like the chow that was found on a ceiling fan - water marks in his house were to within 2 feet of the ceiling, and he escaped drowning by hanging on the fan. Many haven't eaten for weeks. None have been living with people. Now they've been captured (generally unwillingly at this point of the rescue operation), stuffed in a crate, and taken for a ride. Many aren't interested in snuggling, loving, or anything else right now. Inexperienced handlers are getting hurt left and right, or letting their animals get hurt (by letting them get too close to each other). Frantic or aggressive dogs are chewing through their leashes and literally flipping around. Many have to be put on control sticks (those long poles with a wire loop at the end), put in crates, and taken to Chill Out Row where time will tell whether we can try to take them through triage again tonight or not. If not, they go off to join the dangerous dog section at the end of barn 1, where only very experienced handlers are allowed. Some of the dogs are nice dogs, just freaked out past their ability to deal. Some of them have never been nice dogs. The experienced handlers control every dog safely and calmly - that's best for all involved; no matter what their reasons, they can't chew their leash off and run loose here. The inexperienced folks let the dogs get out of control and both dogs and people get hurt.

The intake area, with teams checking in pets. The 18 wheeler is being unloaded in the background.

Then they wait in line for the vet. Sometimes it's a short wait, sometimes a long one. When they get to the vet's station, they get a quick check up and are vaccinated and microchipped. Pets in critical condition are coded 'red' and taken directly to the ICU. Pets who are not in critical condition are coded 'green' and go into the general population. The first night, my vet prescribes treatment for some non-critical cases. The second night, we're told that there is not enough staff to administer treatments to non-critical cases. Pets will either be red or green. This is very disappointing to us, but it's true. There just aren't enough vets and technicians to provide care for non-critical cases - even just tracking and adminstering simple medications for hundreds of animals requires an enormous amount of time. We just don't have the people. So, red or green it is.

A rottie gets her check up at Triage/Intake

I'm on the cat side (since I raised my hand when our group was asked, "Is anyone comfortable handling cats?"). We're in a horse stall, and each cat is pulled out of their carrier, gets a quick going over, then a feline distemper vaccine, a rabies vaccine, a microchip, some wormer, and everyone gets Frontline for fleas. We take their picture with a Polaroid, put an ID collar with their number on their neck, and back in the carrier they go to be taken down to another barn for housing. It's fast, fast, fast - and it's got to be. There are cats stacked up waiting. This is definately field triage medicine.

Many of the dogs, and some of the cats, even, come in coated with toxic sludge. Nobody's sure exactly what's in it; whatever was in the floodwaters (sewerage, chemicals, dead bodies), plus mold and other goodies from later on. Stories abound of things like cell phones dropped in the water only to have the plastic crack and fall off them a few hours later. You're not supposed to touch it. It's several feet deep in houses in some parts of the city.

This kitty is encrusted with the toxic sludge. When you touch her, her fur only moves in large, solid clumps. She's sick, too - dehydrated, emaciated, with a pus discharge coming from her nose. We sent her to the ICU.

Toxic sludge footprints on the exam table after kitty leaves for the ICU. Gloves, gloves, gloves. We always wear them.

We see lots of cats in relatively good condition - these will be ones who the Search & Rescue folks have been feeding. We also see cats in terrible shape who are severely emaciated and dehydrated. The ones who are not dying, but are starved/dehydrated, are given fluids under the skin. If they start eating, they'll be feeling good in a few days. There's more about these on the 'depressing stories' page of this blog. We see kittens who appear to be 3 months of age until we open their mouths and see that they've got all their adult teeth in (this means they are at least 6 months old). They're about half the size they should be.

We see so many that walk out of the carriers and just mush their heads on us and that won't stop purring. Even though we're vetting them, they are so, so happy to have human contact. We also see ones that don't want us to touch them and are willing to enforce that with tooth and claw. No matter, they all get their vaccines, pictures, and microchips. Some are more challenging than others.

A rescuer brings in a cat that they found on the second story of a house. The house had been on the feeding list, and food had been left before, but the first story is coated in the sludge and the cat hadn't come down. They found her today on the second story and she hasn't eaten in a long time. She is unwilling to let us do anything with her, but we manage to get her vaccines & microchip into her, and some fluids too. Hopefully she will begin eating and drinking and make a full recovery - she's not frail enough to send to ICU. As we take her picture (her head sticking out of the blanket we're using to restrain her) the rescuer says, "There was a beautiful picture of her on the wall in the house. I should have taken that. She looked like a different cat when she was clean and fed." We hope her family finds her - she will not want anyone else.

We take Polaroids of the cats and these are loaded onto Petfinder for people to search for their pets. You can see a picture of me, with one of our not-looking-so-well kitties, here. The picture quality is not good, as you might imagine of Polaroids taken in a hurry in the dark. I am not at all confident that they will help people find their pets.

When we have no cats waiting, I take a peek at what else is going on in Intake. Here are some infant puppies being admitted. Their mom watches anxiously from the crate in the background.

The rescuers are pulling any animals they find in houses and apartments. I see a huge iguana, several birds (parakeets, cockatiels, ducks), there is really big snake, turtles.....we get some of them in the cat intake area. A rabbit gets a microchip from us. We see a goldfish arrive in a coffee can, with his food duct taped to the coffee can.

This is a big fish who came in a cooler (with his ceramic fish friend to keep him company, real fish is on the right). They all get the same admission paperwork. His paperwork says "sick fish" and he goes down to the ICU.

We all spray ourselves with whatever kind of insect repellant or insecticide we can find at the beginning of our shifts. If you don't, when you look down you find 20-30 fleas on each of your legs.

The folks I know (new friends and old), on the scene

First, I somehow didn't get a picture of Bev from Northampton Vet. Bev, you lucked out! Bev worked at Hattiesburg and so did her husband Andy. But from how clean and nice (not!) everyone else looks, maybe it's good I didn't get your picture :)


Here is my new friend Heather. She's from South Carolina. The teeny white thing far in the distance is our sleeping tent. It sleeps 400 people, so that gives you some idea how far away it is. The animal barns are in the direction Heather's facing. It's a long, long walk on the hot pavement.

Heather by her Jetta rescuemobile. She went into New Orleans on Thursday to feed & water animals. She tried to rescue a cat but got scratched for her trouble - hence the pink bandage on her arm.

Lori and Leslie decided to organize the huge, huge piles of supplies. They were located near Intake/Triage, so they could work on that when we didn't have any animals to unload (early in the day).

Here's Lori hauling pallets around.

And Leslie, well, showing her prowess or something.

Lori & Leslie hard at work at Intake now.

Leslie waiting with the black dog that had to go to the ICU.

One night a pit bull got loose on one of the 18 wheelers. They sent Lori in after him - happily he was a good boy. This is her entering the truck to get him.

Other scenes from Lamar-Dixon-

Here's everything else from Lamar-Dixon.

Our sleeping tent. Every cot was full. There's a connection at the back to the second tent.

The cat housing areas. Lots of cats in each stall. Too many cats to have toys and the luxuries the cats at Hattiesburg had.

Dogs in stalls. Again, too many to have the luxuries of Hattiesburg. Walks are infrequent. Barns are begging for volunteers....

Like this, posted in the sleeping tent. "Daily promotions! Great pay! Air conditioned 3-5 am!"

Some barns don't have stalls, so there are just crates everywhere.

A Chow getting shaved down so he doesn't get heatstroke.

These are some of the heartworming and happy stories.

On Thursday 9/29 when we reported in at the intake area, the ladies were abuzz. "They got the other Rottweiler! They got her!". Rescuers in New Orleans, several days earlier, had seen a male Rottie on top of a house that was basically reduced to rubble. They went up to him and he let them put a leash on him - but as soon as he had the leash on he pulled them around to the back of the house, and started pawing and whining at the rubble pile. The rescuers looked into the pile and saw that there was another dog there. They were unable to move the rubble and free the second dog, so they took the first dog away to Lamar-Dixon. He was reluctant to leave and depressed at the shelter. The rescuers went back the next day, with more equipment, and were able to remove the rubble and free the second dog, but she was too freaked out for them to get at her. They left food and water and went back again the next day. On the third day, they were able to get the second dog, which turned out to be a female Rottie. They brought her back to Lamar-Dixon and she just lay on the ground. They brought her depressed mate, the male who led the rescuers to her, over to where she was being admitted. He immediately turned into a different, lively dog - he must have been so relieved. The hadn't seen him do anything but lay around, but now he was acting normally. In fact, when it came time for the female to have her vet exam, the male decided that she'd had enough and tried to step in. They had to take him away while she had her check up and shots. They are together now.

The volunteer doing the paperwork for me the first night I did intakes at Lamar-Dixon is a New Orleans resident. She and her husband, and their two cats, were lucky enough to have friends they could live with outside the city. Their house is uninhabitable. She heard that we had rescued pets at Lamar-Dixon and just came there to see how she could help. She kept thanking us all for coming to help the animals. As we processed cats, she would often tell us, "This one was living 5 blocks from my house" or "This one's from my neighborhood". She worked her butt off and then just faded away at the end of the night. I wish her family, human and animal, the best of luck in the future.

One rescuer told me how he'd rescued a cat from a destroyed house the day before. He also found a cell phone bill in the house, and they called the cell number to try and contact the cat's owners. The woman called them back two hours later, while they were still out in the field collecting animals. She was hysterical with relief and joy. The woman was several states away, in a human shelter. She thought that her house was destroyed and her cat was dead. Well, her house is destroyed, but she was crying nonstop to hear that her beloved cat was still alive. Hopefully, they will eventually be reunited.

At Hattiesburg, a very large gentleman was searching the aisles and stalls for his dog. It takes a long time to search all the stalls. In one stall, he finally found his dog, who is in fine health. The big guy was so overcome with emotion that he just laid down on the ground and cried.

During our intake on 9/28, one of the volunteers who was entering the pets' information in Petfinder came over to our cat intake/triage stall. "Have you had any orphan babies?", she asked hopefully, "I do all the orphan babies at my shelter. I just love them." "YES! 3 week olds, three of them, emaciated and dehydrated, we sent them to the ICU!", we replied. Her eyes lit up and she took off. The next night I asked her, "Did you get the bottle babies?". A contented smile lit up her face. "Yes, I did. Their little gums were gray last night, but they are pink and healthy today. I gave them baths and they are clean. I adore them....". The babies have a new mom who is in love with them. They'll grow up strong and happy.

These are the sad and gruesome stories. Only read this page if you are ready for graphic content.

There were a lot of tragic stories down there, even if you just stayed in the shelters themselves. The folks going out into the field saw the worst stuff. They were still going into New Orleans and recovering pets - it'd been a month since Hurricane Katrina, so they were now finding more dead pets than live ones. They said the worst were the ones that the owners had left locked in crates, thinking they'd be back in a few days.

One group found a large pack of loose dogs at a school. Investigating the building, they found that it had been used as an evacuation point. Clearly the people had brought their pets with them to evacuate, but then had been forcibly separated from them. There were dead cats, still in carriers, with folders containing all their identification and vet info on top of the carriers. Some people tied their dogs to tables so they wouldn't get lost. They died. The dogs that were left loose were able to forage and were still running around, most of them.

Many pets are being found that have survived from consuming the corpses of deceased pets, or even their owners. Animal rescuers are still discovering human remains.

The conditions of the live pets being brought in was getting worse and worse.

Pets are scored by veterinarians on a BCS (body condition score) of 1 - 5. Ideal weight is a 3; most pets we see in New England are 4's with some 5's (obese). I've never seen a 1 before going to Lamar-Dixon, but I saw lots of them there. A pet with a BCS of 1/5 (1 on a scale of 1-5) is a skeleton with skin & fur draped on it. There is no discernible body fat and marked muscle loss. To see what a pet BCS chart looks like, go here.

I, and the vet I was working with, sometimes had trouble figuring out what gender the cat was that we were admitting to the shelter. This was because some of them were so emaciated that a part of the pelvis that I had never seen before (or really knew was there) was so prominent that the genitals were distorted over it. All the underlying flesh was gone, fat and muscle both. The cats' genitals were laying on bone.

This cat came through triage late on Wednesday night (9/28). We sent her straight to the ICU. When she arrived there, her body temperature was 93.4 (a cat's normal temp is 101-102). "Three paws in the grave", was our phrase for these animals. Her BCS is 1/5. This cat had clearly not been eating or drinking (probably anything at all) since the hurricane a month ago. You can see just a little from the picture how thin she is - her body is a spine and ribs covered in fur and collapsed inwards. No fat and hardly any muscle is left. Most of what you see is just fur. She was put on iv's and was still alive when I left on Friday noon; although not looking good, her temperature had gone up and she was eating.

This is a little mixed breed dog who arrived on Thursday, September 29th. He had been given fluids that day in New Orleans after being picked up, and that's probably what kept him going long enough to get to the shelter. He was too weak to walk or stand for more than a few seconds, he just lay down. His BCS is 1/5. You can see each of his ribs underneath him, and that's his pelvis sticking out over his hips.

A top view of the same dog. It's night, and he's black, so the horror of his condition is hard to see - you can see a little, but you can't really see how bad it is. Look at his hip bones sticking inches out of his body and you get an idea. He went to the ICU as well, and was looking better on Friday.

This is a little poodle type dog in the ICU. In addition to being severely emaciated and dehydrated, and covered in mats and sores, he's got a big abscess on his neck, probably from being bitten by another animal. He's just given up. He's such a mess that it's hard to tell where the dog is here; the tail is at the bottom of the photo, and he's curled up with his head facing the top right of the picture. You can see his ID collar on his neck.

This is a dog who I gave treatments to on Friday morning 9/30. I think she's a chow, but it's hard to tell. She's had mange, skin infections, eye infections, and ear infections forever. This dog did not have a loving family before the hurricane.

This pit bull's intake sheet says, "Owner murdured. Police removed dog from house." She is as depressed as she looks.

Scenes from Hattiesburg

This dog's paperwork read, "Found in tree". He'd been carried up the tree by flood waters and remained up there after the waters went down.

He's still a happy guy, though - eager to play. Here's a shot of him sticking his nose up my shorts as I try to get a picture of him. About 1/3 of the dogs are pit bulls. Hardly any dogs are neutered.

The Hattiesburg ICU for sick pets.

Our sleeping tents. We were glad to have them - especially the air conditioning, when it worked - but the cots were the squeakiest things in the world. With 100 people per tent and the cots screaming every time someone moved all night, a lot of folks had trouble sleeping and set up tents of their own out by the dog walking area. I was too tired to care.

When I checked this dog, I found spay sutures on her tummy. Someone had taken her to be spayed right before the hurricane; she's got a month's worth of hair regrowth, but the spay sutures are still there. She's someone's beloved pet. She likes to share her bone with anyone who comes near.

On the other hand, this tiny adult girl - about 6 pounds - has never been well cared for. Half her hair is missing and she is covered in pus, discharge, and angry red skin from mange. She is probably getting the first vet care of her life.

Some of our youngest charges. There were 7 of these pups; mom is some kind of small hound mix. It was so hot that they usually were all as far from each other as they could get, instead of all piled up on each other like we usually see in pups this age. Some of the folks in the ICU ward were bottle feeding the pups to help Mom out - she had a lot to do taking care of the babies in the heat.

We had some pot bellied pigs there, too. The people in their barn made mud pits in the pigs' areas, and the pigs were very happy about that.

A hound peers out from his stall, ready for his next walk.

Some of the horses out for a walk. They were walked a lot for exercise.

Lots of cute kittens.

Background information not in the summary....

In response to Hurricane Katrina, many animal rescue groups sprang into action.

Nobody could tell how many animals were in need of help. There are national averages that tell you how many cats and dogs are expected per 10,000 people - but that doesn't tell you how many actually were living in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina hit, or how many were evacuated with their families, or how many remained in the city in need of help. Nobody could even tell how long it would be until the owners themselves could return to the city. In past disasters, people were able to return to their homes to take out pets and belongings after a few days. It had never happened that evacuees were unable to return for a month. Until this time.

Many people, accustomed to multiple evacuations where nothing ever happened, refused to evacuate. Others evacuated but left their pets at home with several days' food and water. Many evacuees had no choice; human evacuation centers, such as the Red Cross, would not take pets. Some were faced with either not evacuating their families, or leaving their pets behind. Not a choice that should have to be made. Eventually, some people were forcibly separated from their pets.

As the days stretched to weeks, and people still were not allowed back into their city or homes to retrieve their pets, the situation grew desperate. Animal rescuers were allowed into the city about a week after the hurricane hit (the human rescues had to be completed before animal rescue was allowed in). They began removing animals from the city and bringing them to Lamar-Dixon for care.

Lamar-Dixon rapidly became overwhelmed with animals. Hundreds arrived daily, until over 2,000 or more were being housed at the temporary shelter. At this point, the state of Louisiana stepped in and said that no more than 1,300 animals could be housed at the center. The rescue groups running Lamar-Dixon were now faced with a choice; send some of the animals currently housed at the center away (somewhere) so they could continue to admit the animals starving and dehydrating in the city, or cease admissions. If they stopped admitting animals, the animals still in the city would die. If they sent the animals away, how could they be reunited with their families? Facilities didn't exist nearby.

A compromise was struck. Animals would be posted on a national website (www.petfinder.com) and sent out to approved animal shelters across the country. These shelters would continue to look for the animals' original families until October 15th (although the end of December is encouraged), and if the original owner is identified, the national organizations such as the HSUS would pay to ship the pet back to the original owner. They began taking photos and implanting microchips, and shipping out hundreds of dogs, cats, and other pets to animal shelters across the country. This allowed animals to continue to be brought into Lamar-Dixon from New Orleans.

The condition of the animals in New Orleans continued to deterioriate over time, the longer they were left without food and water. The first to die were those that drowned, just like the people. Next were those whose families left them locked in cages, crates, or rooms, expecting to be gone for only a day or two. Without any ability to forage, they died. As time went by, animals trapped in buildings without food and water, those on chains or shut in yards, and those loose outside who could not forage for themselves also began to die. Loose dogs formed dangerous packs which menaced humans and attacked and killed other dogs.

All the while, frantic pet owners were calling national 800 numbers and sending desperate emails to groups imploring them to go in and save their pets. Lists of these pets were compiled and passed out to the rescuers. Rescuers were taking out as many as they could, but an experienced team might only get out 8-15 animals per day - with street signs down and debris everywhere, addresses were difficult or impossible to find. The pets were not always eager to be rescued, either - afraid and fearful, they hid and fought rescue. Estimates were that thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of animals remained in the city.

Over time it became clear that Lamar-Dixon could neither hold nor deal with tens of thousands of animals. Even providing the very basic minimum of care for 1,300 animals is extraordinarily difficult in the best of times. In a disaster area, without the use of an animal shelter designed for housing dogs & cats, in temperatures so hot that both humans and animals were collapsing from heatstroke daily, and the conditions of the arriving animals worsening daily - it was not good. Now add in the daily admission, processing, and shipping out of hundreds of animals.

The decision was made to shift emphasis to feeding and watering the animals where they were, when possible, only removing those in unsafe situations (unsafe buildings and the like) or whose health was poor. For many animals, remaining at home and being fed and watered there was preferable to the stress of being 'rescued' and brought to an enormous shelter filled with strange animals, strange people, and living in a small crate in a strange environment. The animals are also exposed to each other's diseases when they are brought together. It's loud and impossibly stressful. Many animals who would not normally be aggressive cannot even be physically approached in this environment. It's hard to provide them good care when they attack you if you go near them.

During all of this, the groups were so busy trying to keep their heads above water that they could not even figure out who they needed to help them. The ASPCA recieved over 20,000 volunteer applications. Imagine trying to sort through those and figure out who would be helpful...remember we're dealing with stressed, aggressive, sick animals - and punishing temperatures and work hours for the humans. Most well meaning folks wanting to help may be more of a liability than a help. Some groups, who'd been posting online that "everyone should just COME DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!" soon found themselves overwhelmed with folks unable to perform the heavy physical labor required, folks who'd never handled an animal who was not their own pet, or folks who wanted to do rescue work and refused to do anything else (such as clean a cage). That didn't work.

By the end of September, HSUS was saying that there was a desperate need for experienced animal handlers in the shelters. Animal shelter workers, animal control officers, veterinary staff - folks who could handle stressed, sick, aggressive animals. That's where we started.

Getting pets back with their people....

It's happening, but not enough.

Because the huge volume of animals meant that they had to be shipped out to other shelters across the country, pet owners are now supposed to be looking for their lost pets via the web, on Petfinder. This is a wonderful plan.

My concern is that I have talked with many folks who've lost pets in regular circumstances (ie, they haven't lost everything they own, members of their human family haven't just died, they have a home to live in) - and even these people have trouble looking for their pet. The pictures that are on Petfinder are sometimes great, usually terrible, sometimes not even there. Here's my question - try looking through all the black shorthaired cats on there. Could you figure out which was yours if you'd lost one? Or just try looking at this posting, that's me with this cat. Could you identify your cat from this? It's actually a pretty good picture, take a look at the others.

And some of the information is incorrect. Part of what I did at Hattiesburg was work on an animal inventory - seeing if what the computer thought we had in the stalls matched the animals that were actually there. We had animals with incorrect breed, color, and gender. The computer guy at Hattiesburg assured me that if someone saw a pet they thought was theirs, but the gender was incorrect, they'd call to find out if it was their pet. I don't agree. I think many or most people will assume that the shelter knows if the dog is a male or a female. Again, if you're looking through pictures of 300 black shorthaired cats, are you going to try and track down all the ones listed as girls if you know yours is a boy? I looked through the cat listings, just page after page. I saw some dog pictures in there, mixed with cats' writeups. Where are those cats' pictures? Those dogs' information?

The size of the disaster makes this project impossible to imagine. Add in poor handwriting, late night blurry photos, data entry errors (there are not enough people trained on the animal shelter software being used, so new folks were trained in the field), exhaustion....

Because of the pace of the shelter, there are also problems just calling people. The animals are not, to my knowledge, being scanned for pre-existing microchips. We did not have scanners in intake/triage. We were told that the shelters that the pets were shipped to would check them for chips. Will this happen? I don't know. This bothered me more than most other things. I have always thought of microchips as a failsafe system if the pet was scanned. I never imagined that in a disaster on this scale, that pets wouldn't even be scanned for microchips. I don't know if they were being scanned later on, but I was told that they weren't.

There isn't a good system for identifying owners of pets wearing tags. There just aren't enough people. Of course, because it's a disaster area, even calling the owners of pets with tags is more difficult. Many of the pets wearing rabies tags as their only ID can't be identified, because the veterinary hospital is gone. Many of the phone numbers are not working, because the house is destroyed. There just aren't enough volunteers to track these things down.

There isn't a good system for holding animals who've been identified. There was a Great Dane who had tags on. His owner was called and came to pick him up, but he'd already been shipped out to another shelter (he was at Lamar-Dixon for less than 24 hours). The owner was told what shelter he'd been shipped to, but they looked through all the animals they'd gotten and said they didn't have him. Nobody knows where he is. The only thing that's known is that he was at Lamar-Dixon.

There are some in the rescue field who will openly tell you that these pets' families 'don't deserve to have them back'. These folks are all for finding new homes for all the pets. You don't know what the situation was that caused these people to be separated from their pets. For some examples, read here. You weren't there, you don't know, you don't have the right to take their pets away.

I have talked with people looking for their lost pets. I have seen the hollow-eyed pet owners wandering the aisles with name tags that say "Carolyn. Lost 2 cats" or "John. Lost pit bull". They are exhausted and grieving. They start out peering anxiously and eagerly into every stall, getting slower and sadder as they go on, and on. They wander around asking volunteers, "Do you have any more dogs? Have you seen a brown pit bull with white toes?" Many have lost everything they have, except, maybe, their pet. I saw a woman at Hattiesburg checking in at the lost & found desk and say she was looking for her two lost chihuahua mixes. When someone blurted out, "I don't think we have any chihuahuas", she burst into tears.



Looking for their lost rottie
I talked with two folks who were sitting in lawn chairs watching the animals get taken off the trucks at triage. The unloading takes about 6-8 hours and these folks were just watching every single dog come off the trucks. Turns out that they had two rottweilers and a cockatiel that they could not take with them when they evacuated. When they returned home, they found the cockatiel drowned in his cage. They had found one of their rotties at Lamar-Dixon two days before, and they were looking for the second one. They said, "they're our family", and shared lots of stories about the dogs. They tried to smile for the picture but they were exhausted and grieving. They said the dog they had found was shell shocked and not himself; they hoped that finding the second one would help the other dog recover too. They all need each other.

We also saw a few reunions. It was hard to tell who was more excited, the pets or the people. All were crying and hysterical.

With the critical shortage of qualified volunteers and unprecedented size of the emergency, it's a very difficult situation. I hope that the HSUS and other organizations learn a lot from this experience for the next crisis, and that things will be better next time.

I want to emphasize that the animals are being well cared for, and that they have hordes of eager people who want to adopt them - they aren't in danger of being put down if their families don't find them (although I don't know what they'll be able to do with the ones who are so aggressive). It's just that their families are so desperate to find them, because they have nothing else left in the world. And, from the reunions that are happening, the pets are equally desperate to find their very own family again.

It's made worse by volunteers who 'save' pets by stealing them, and small rescues who don't register their found pets with the Petfinder site. For every Hurricane Katrina pet that is in shelter right now, there are 1,000 others who don't have any options in shelters all across the South and Midwest. I think the rabid rescuers should give those guys some attention, and let the Hurricane Katrina families find their lost loved ones.

Hattiesburg, what it's like
We arrived in Hattiesburg at 11 pm on Saturday, September 23, after a 28 hour drive.

Hattiesburg had four barns; one had horses and other livestock, two were mainly dogs, and one had dogs and lots of cats.

Some of the barns at Hattiesburg

Every morning at 8am there is a meeting for all the volunteers, which everyone's supposed to attend. It can be helpful because mostly everything else is, or at least seems to be, chaos. Meeting allows you to get a little information. We learned that although Hattiesburg had been housing up to 1,300 animals, there were now only about 660 left there. Animals were being shipped out daily. According to the HSUS website, more than 2,300 animals went through the Hattiesburg shelter in the weeks it was open.

Dogs
Dogs are housed in the horse stalls, in wire dog crates. Each stall might have 4-6 dogs. Because Hattiesburg then had far fewer pets than at its height, a few lucky dogs were the last ones in their stalls, and they got to have the run of the stall. Whether or not the dogs had toys depended on who was cleaning and caring for them. Tons of toys were available, if you tracked them down in the piles of donations. In some rows, the dogs always had them. In some rows, never. It all depended on the folks providing their care; we soon found out that there is no formal training system or written instructions - you got trained by whoever was doing the job when you started. Since you were an old hand after a day or two, you'd then start training new people. If there was a bad link in the chain, things like giving the dogs toys could easily get lost. The good thing was that you could also just take the initative and say, "Hey, we're going to give the dogs on our row toys every morning." Blankets were only available for the frail or old dogs. They tossed their food & water (and peed and pooped) on them, so the blankets didn't stay clean for long. I know that sheltering about 40 animals keeps the washer & dryer in my shelter running 10 hours a day cleaning bedding, so I really can't imagine a way to launder the bedding for 660 or 1,300 animals. Besides, it's in the mid 90's - most of the animals who had bedding preferred to stretch out on the cooler concrete (if they could).

The barn manager sets the tone of the barn. Barns with good managers had team spirit, orientations, and organization. Those without did not. One individual makes such a difference.

Huge industrial fans kept the air moving in the hallways, and animal caregivers set up box fans in the stalls to help keep the dogs cooler. It was hot, hot, hot - in the low 90's, with very high humidity, which makes the 'heat index' in the 100's. I saw both an English Bulldog and a Pug in the barns - both are breeds with pushed in faces that have a very difficult time handling heat. I don't know how they didn't die of heatstroke, because even with the fans, it was still way hotter than those dogs can handle up here in New England.

Big fans at work in the aisles during morning cleaning

Every dog has a set of paperwork attached either to the front of the stall, to the crate, or the wall near the crate. This contained all their vet records from their time at Hattiesburg, as well as records showing when they were fed, cleaned, and walked - and when they peed or pooped - which we filled in every time we interacted with the dog. Also in the packet was a copy of their admission paperwork which showed where they came from, sometimes with very sad notations ("owner dead"). Unfortunately a lot of the dogs figured out how to pull the plastic sleeve in and destroyed or ate their paperwork....the admission form was the only one that there was another copy of somewhere. You'd see plastic sleeves with tiny shreds of records.

Dog stall at Hattiesburg

They'd all been given a check up when they came in - vaccines, microchips, and put on medications if needed for skin problems, etc. Many had also had to be bathed to get toxic sludge off them.

The dogs had areas outside to be walked in, and also 6 big pens where you could take a dog and let him run around off-leash. Dogs could not be walked between 10 am - 6 pm; too hot - both dogs and people would get heatstroke. The dog walking contigent was very active, and each dog went out several times in each walking period (7-10 am, and after 6 pm).

Cats
Cats are housed similarly, but there are lots more per stall - often a dozen or more crates per stall. Hattiesburg had a lot of 'adoption age' kittens - those 8 - 16 weeks of age - and littermates would all be together. Cat Row was in Barn D. There weren't any dogs on Cat Row, but they occupied the other 5 rows of the barn, so the cats had to listen to all their noise. The vast majority of the cats seemed well contented, probably because they'd been there long enough to settle in. They had bedding and toys, and there was a lot of normal cat behavior going on (playing, grooming). That was good to see. As with the dogs, fans were set up to move the air in the stalls.

The cats had dedicated attendants who provided care only for them. Your badge was marked with a green dot if you were allowed to work with the cats. If any animals bolted, you'd lose them - the stall doors are open for air flow - so you'd have to be very careful as you took care of the cats.

Cat stall at Hattiesburg. You can see how hot it is at 10 am by the sweat soaking her.

The heat

It's hard to describe how hot it is. It's so hot that although you can keep moving in the middle of the day if you try really hard, you cannot function normally. You just get slower and slower. There are coolers with ice and water bottles at the end of every row, and folks keep after you to keep drinking. Many volunteers were hospitalized with deyhydration/overheating. You're encouraged to NOT work in the mid afternoon.

They try to keep the animals cool as best they can. Dogs get ice in their water bowls, cats get baggies with ice in them, everyone gets fans.

Hosing down dogs at Hattiesburg to keep them cooler

These big tarps, weighed down by gallons of water, keep the sun off the dogs in the end row

My first day, I met up with someone I know! Bev from Northampton Vet, who somehow I didn't get a picture of. I've worked with her before, but had no idea she'd be volunteering down there. It was really good to see someone I knew - and who I knew was a great animal person! Bev's husband Andy, a policeman, had also come down with her to volunteer, and they put him to work on security.

Security

Security was a problem in some areas of Hattiesburg. The living area (sleeping tents, mess tents, portable showers, etc) were within a fenced compound. National Guard folks were also living there, and went out during the day to patrol areas destroyed by the hurricane. Folks from all different branches of law enforcement were there to keep us safe. Outside the fences were the animal housing areas, and the back side of the barns (including the only flush toilets) were NOT safe at night. The facility shared parts of the area with an RV park, and the HSUS was not allowed to ban the public from areas outside the fenced compound. The security people told us again and again to stay away from those areas at night.

Dogs had also been stolen; some by members of the public (some pit bulls for fighting, which is popular down there) and some by volunteers who became attached and wanted to 'save' the pet. Unfortunately they may be 'saving' the pet from a reunion with a grieving family. One volunteer stole a puppy with parvovirus, and sent around an email later saying how she tried to save him, but he died on her lap as she was driving home, having vomiting and diarrhea all the way. Too bad she didn't leave him there in the care of the veterinarians - he would have had a chance to survive with treatment. A litter of puppies broke with parvo the day before I arrived at Hattiesburg; the vets set up an isolation area in a horse trailer to keep them away from the rest of the dogs, and they all recovered.

They started locking the stalls at night while I was there. We were all told to constantly be on the lookout for anyone in the barns who was not wearing an HSUS id badge (issued to you when you registered as a volunteer, or to search for your lost pet), or anyone loading pets into vehicles from anywhere but the designated loading area.

Transporting out

Because Hattiesburg was designed as a transitional facility, it was required to shut down. They'd stopped admissions a few days before my arrival and were sending pets out daily to shelters all over the country. Shelters wanting to foster animals (and adopt out the ones not reclaimed by owners) had to go through an approval process to ensure that they would be able to take good care of the animals, and were willing to help search for the pets' lost families. On some days, hundreds of animals were shipped out. Your transport vehicle was required to be air conditioned, so the pets wouldn't get heatstroke. One shelter did not know this and arrived with a huge horse trailer they'd rented for over $10,000. They ended up taking the animals they were scheduled to, but had to find air conditioned vehicles. Hattiesburg was not going to send out animals only to have them drop of heatstroke on transport!

I talked with one shelter in Florida. They'd sent staff up to help in the first week Hattiesburg was open. One of the women was there then, and told me about how they had to shower with their clothes on, under a hose in the barn - because that's all they had. It made me feel like I was living in a 5 star hotel, with my cot and air conditioned tent! They'd taken a load of animals then - ones whose owners had surrendered them, knowing that they could no longer care for them - and had come back now to take a load of animals for foster care.

This is a shelter from Nebraska, getting ready to take over 100 animals.

One of the most frustrating things for me about Hattiesburg is that during the time we were there, there were more volunteers than were needed. Because the number of animals in the shelter was getting smaller all the time, less and less volunteers were needed. In fact, people with veterinary technician and other valuable skills were cleaning, feeding, and walking dogs. The standard of care of the animals at this time was excellent. However, there was absolutely no information available about the vast need in Lamar-Dixon. Volunteers were discouraged from leaving to go to Lamar-Dixon, and only through contacting (via cell phone) folks who'd already made the jump did we decide to go there ourselves.

How I went down there, for those who were suprised at my sudden departure -

Responding to an email send by a HSUS staffer via the MAC (Massachusetts Animal Coalition) email group entreating any people with animal handling skills to come and help, I applied on the HSUS website on Wednesday, September 28th. At 5 o'clock the next day, I learned that I was to be on a transport leaving on Friday, September 29th to go to Lamar-Dixon. With 24 hours' notice, I began preparing to leave. Things moved quickly!

HSUS would be renting a vehicle and paying for our gas, so desperate were they for skilled help. We had three shelter staff, one person with feral cat experience, and one person with a few months' vet office skills in our group. The following Friday, with more notice, a group of 30-40 people would be going.

Unfortunately, Hurricane Rita chose this time to make an appearance. Lamar-Dixon was evacuated except for skeleton staff; they'd sent out as many animals as possible ahead of time and only about 600 remained. Only 600....my own shelter normally houses about 30-40 animals. We were instructed to go instead to the Mississippi state shelter in Hattiesburg.

After a road trip of 28 hours, we arrived in Hattiesburg. We'd left one vehicle with two people behind to sleep; they couldn't sleep on the road and just couldn't go on any longer. My vehicle, with three people, slept in shifts. I got three hours of sleep and we arrived at 11 pm on Saturday night, in pretty good shape.

Turned out that the weather conspired against all the animal shelters. Friday the Hattiesburg shelter had been evacuated because of a tornado warning. The few folks still up & about at 11pm carefully showed us where the tornado shelter room was, because we were still under tornado watch. Camping was not allowed in order to keep everyone near the tornado shelter; if we were to hear the air horn, we were to drop what we were doing and run to the room. I was assured that it was built to withstand the strongest tornado.

Not being much of a camper, I was thrilled to see that there were large tents with cots for sleeping. With air conditioning, no less! Showers, mess tent - it was luxury.

Hurricane damage elsewhere - we were too busy working to see much else of the damage, but here are a few pictures taken from the car as we drove!

Trees were snapped off everywhere as if they were matchsticks, or had been gnawed off at 15-20 feet by a giant nuclear beaver. The highway guardrails were pummeled by the fallen trees.



Roadsigns were down, which made driving 'challenging' (translated: we got lost a lot). In some areas you would drive on the highway for an hour without seeing an upright sign. Some of them you could read after you'd passed; some not.

And business signs were destroyed too.