Pawprints of Katrina

AFTER THE BREACH OF THE LEVEES separating the lower Mississippi River from the below-sea-level bowl of New Orleans, days turned into weeks and the pets of Katrina were forced to fend for themselves in the aftermath of the flooding. Then, in late September, Hurricane Rita hit the region, leaving some neighborhoods underwater for seven more days and stranding even more pets. Many animals were left on streets, inside homes, in yards behind fences with no way to escape, and in garages, sheds, attics, apartments, and offices.

Still, the pets’ spirits soared above the rising floodwaters, and the hope of once again seeing their people kept them alive against terrible odds. Despite those odds, thousands braved the storms and survived. The pets lived not only without food or water but also without the companionship and care of their guardians. For the first time, the mainstream media covered that extraordinary bond between people and their pets. Haunting images flooded the airwaves: stranded humans and animals wandered aimlessly with no food or water.

Because of those images, people from across the United States and Canada arrived in droves to save the animals from the murky standing water and, later, the muck-covered streets. Then extraordinary efforts were made to reunite them with their families. More still, however, were never rescued, or the groups that did rescue them didn’t have the means or the paperwork to track them, so those animals were never reunited with their people.

As a result, Hurricane Katrina was a wake-up call with a resounding message: along with people, pets also need to be protected during a disaster. What came out of the televised images, as the world watched in horror, was the vow never to let it be repeated. Katrina proved that people need to be prepared, from individuals putting identifying tags on their pets’ collars or microchipping them to cat owners keeping crates on hand to government officials at all levels mandating provisions for not only humans but their pets.

Since Hurricane Katrina, state and federal legislation has been passed that requires animal shelters to be included in government disaster plans. On the national level, in a groundbreaking federal bill, leaving pets behind and thereby separating them from their humans is now unacceptable. With the sweep of a pen, Congress put the nation one step closer to protecting the health and well-being of pets in future disasters.

A congressional caucus is doing its part, as well. On September 20, 2005, Michael Mountain, president of Best Friends, met in Washington, D.C., with a group of lawmakers who make up the bipartisan Congressional Caucus for Animals. Members of the caucus asked major rescue organizations, including Best Friends, to let them know how the overall Katrina animal rescue was going—which Best Friends and the others were, at that moment, entrenched in—how interactions with the federal government were working, and how things could work better in future emergencies. The request was a positive sign that Congress was paying attention.

Of those pets reluctantly abandoned during Katrina, Best Friends rescued about 7,000, reuniting more than 15 percent. Together, all the animal groups and individuals in the area rescued roughly 20,000 animals from an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 left stranded in the New Orleans area.

Doing its part to create a solution, the next year Best Friends invited volunteers from a variety of organizations to join in a three-day roundtable discussion to help plan for the next catastrophe. At the opening meeting, Paul Berry, now CEO of Best Friends, emphasized that disasters aren’t isolated to hurricanes. Disasters also include mudslides, tornadoes, wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, and whatever else comes along. The plan, he said, is to get disaster response right over time. Participants broke into discussion groups of five to ten people to develop strategies, tactics, and protocols to best respond in the future. In the end, each group came up with comprehensive ideas, vision statements, and outlines, all in preparation for the next big one.

The roundtable discussions were a precursor to the 2007 hands-on, four-day, outdoor rapid-response training session in Angel Canyon on the Best Friends sanctuary grounds. A hundred volunteers from thirty-one states and Canada went through the first annual real-life exercises for animal admissions, base camp operations, and FEMA-like procedures. A mock base camp was set up in a desert section on the thirty-three-thousand-acre sanctuary grounds. Volunteers were self-sufficient; they brought their own food, tents, and solar showers and set up in a remote area of the sanctuary in Angel Canyon, located about thirty miles southeast of Zion National Park.

In the days and weeks following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, accurate information, especially about what was happening to and for the animals, was hard to come by. That’s where a coalition comes into play, to ensure that the next rescue of animals is more organized.

After Katrina, major national animal organizations got together to see if they could coordinate their resources for future disasters and to offer FEMA and state emergency managers a one-stop shop to address animals’ needs for the next disaster.

With that in mind, Best Friends signed on with the coalition of the largest animal welfare groups in the nation. Representatives from those groups met at the Best Friends sanctuary as a formal step in the process of forming the coalition, whose aim is to work together when a disaster strikes and animals are in jeopardy. Also discussed was gaining access to disaster zones. Whereas Best Friends had an agreement after Katrina with Jefferson Parish Animal Control giving its rescue teams access, groups that had no such agreement were denied access. Had they been allowed in, even more animals could have been saved. In the future, because the coalition is working in concert with FEMA officials, a coordinated effort with full access to a disaster area will help teams search for and rescue pets in a timely fashion.

The joint group—the National Animal Rescue and Sheltering Coalition, or NARSC, as it’s being called—includes representatives from the American Humane Association, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Code3 Associates, the Humane Society of the United States, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the National Animal Control Association, the Society of Animal Welfare Administration, United Animal Nations, and Best Friends Animal Society.

After leaving Camp Tylertown in late November 2005, I returned to the Gulf Coast region in January 2006, this time to spend the majority of my time in New Orleans, Waveland, and Gulfport to write an in-depth piece for Best Friends magazine about the status of animals still on the streets three months after Katrina. Animal control in the area at the time was reporting that the animals on the streets were simply strays and no different from any other city’s homeless cats and dogs. I went there to see for myself.

What I found was disheartening. The word being sent out by trappers on the ground was that thousands of Katrina pets lost in the storm were still wandering the streets. Seeing the animals in person was shocking. They were skinny, pregnant, or injured, and they ran if you made even the slightest move toward them. Some had been on their own for so long without human contact that they had become feral-like.

I finished touring the region by visiting the handful of temporary rescue centers still set up. Some were breaking down camp. The volunteers—many of whom were trackers using humane traps and catch poles—were preparing to leave. Then I checked into a hotel in Carrollton to hunker down and write about what I had just witnessed. The hotel was packed with New Orleans families who had nowhere else to go. Of the many families I saw, only two had dogs with them.

Rich Crook, who in October 2005 took over operation of a small temporary shelter in a Winn-Dixie parking lot on Chef Menteur Highway (and was later hired by Best Friends as its rapid response manager), commented that so many animals were still on the streets or under houses that the numbers were beyond the scope of what local authorities could control. Because many of the pets were not spayed or neutered, they were reproducing on the streets, he explained, and their kittens and puppies were growing up feral. Throughout the Gulf region, Crook estimated the numbers still out there to be in the tens of thousands—and growing. And there was no place to house them once they were rounded up.

Anne Bell, director of the Southern Animal Foundation on Magazine Street, discussed the dilemma of the city that she said was now overrun with animals left behind in the storm. As she sat in the lobby of her veterinary clinic near downtown, she explained that probably 1,500 animals were in her neighborhood alone. They were, she said, people’s pets. Anne summed up the rescuers’ concerns: “We can’t let anyone forget them.”

From what one volunteer with Animal Rescue New Orleans (ARNO) said, all evidence indicated the dogs and cats on the streets were domesticated strays and not part of a true stray or feral population, as New Orleans officials were saying at the time. In fact, many of the pets were arriving at rescue centers wearing collars and tags, allowing lost-and-found workers to reunite them with their families.

Months after the storm, scores of animals were still stuck in hurricane-torn neighborhoods, including the working-class community of Hollygrove near the border of Orleans and Jefferson parishes, not far from where Susan Norton’s damaged townhouse sat. As Susan waited to be allowed back into her home, she moved into the same hotel where I was staying. People were returning to her neighborhood, she said, but a few blocks away in Hollygrove, the devastation was worse. The homes had been so heavily flooded and the damage so great that people couldn’t go home.

Indeed, three months after the hurricane, Hollygrove locals and residents from similarly demolished communities still had not returned. As a result, stray pets had migrated to populated areas toward people, food, and water. The displaced animals, said Susan, who had been living in the hotel in the Garden District and driving to Carollton each day to work on her home, were heading to her neighborhood. As she arrived each day, she spotted dozens of cats, drawn to where the people were. She witnessed cats sitting on sidewalks, on porches, and under cars. She’d see an occasional dog under a house. The few residents who had returned, she noted, were feeding them.

In a particularly hard-hit area of Orleans Parish, near Bayou Street and Lake Pontchartrain, the Mutt Shack rescue group set up its center at Lake Castle Middle School. Amanda St. John, who had been running the operation without water or electricity, said she planned to stay until late December or early January, in time for the school’s reopening, which meant that yet one more rescue group would be gone from the area.

It wasn’t just New Orleans animals, however, that were still displaced. Even harder hit by Katrina were those living on the Mississippi Gulf. “There’s still a lot of work to be done for the companion animals here on the coast,” said Tara High, director of the Humane Society of South Mississippi, which is based in Gulfport. “If you ask some people in the community, they will say things are back to normal. I disagree. There are pockets of animals that were hit hard, and stray animals live there. We need professionals to come down and catch them.” She said her facility couldn’t take in any more because the shelter was already over its capacity. She, too, said what the animals appeared to be saying: “It’s not over. We need help.”

For months, Lisa Martin of In Defense of Animals in Canton, Mississippi, traveled to Waveland once a week to pick up dogs and cats captured by animal control. Then she took them to Camp Tylertown to be placed in foster care or reunited with their owners.

Lisa told the story of a Chihuahua’s rescue as proof that efforts on behalf of the animals needed to continue. The tiny dog was taken from a house and reunited with his person after two and a half months spent alone in the once-flooded house. The little Chihuahua was under the covers, in bed, and still alive when rescuers discovered her, Lisa said. That’s why she continued rescuing pets long after other animal rescuers had left the area, she explained. As long as the animals were there, she would rescue them.

An exit strategy was being discussed for future animal rescues, but for Katrina, no such plan was in place. Because of Hurricane Katrina, animal welfare groups now know they cannot go blindly into an area. There has to be a beginning- and an end-plan in place. Since Katrina, many animal welfare groups now provide rapid response training sessions, including the Humane Society of the United States, Code3 Associates, and Best Friends.

Collectively, two months following Katrina, rescue teams throughout the region who chose to stay were still taking in more than a hundred animals a day. “As long as there are populations coming in, the strays still need assistance,” said Mark Mikelonis, a Louisiana veterinarian who practiced on the North Shore but volunteered for three days in November 2005 at Mutt Shack. “It’s an overwhelming situation. It’s difficult to get a good sense of when the right exit strategy would be.

The challenge facing animal rescuers still on the ground was to keep the pets alive by feeding and watering them until they were rescued, and then, once they were off the streets, get medical care for them. Another goal was to rescue puppies and kittens before they grew up and began having babies of their own. National Guard Staff Sergeant Mark Rice, during a visit to Mutt Shack, said there were an overwhelming number of cats in Orleans Parish. He described his role as the eyes and ears of rescue groups. Should the stray cats be allowed to roam free, he said, they’d have kittens and the problem would worsen.

It had already started. During one three-day period in the months following Katrina, Best Friends took in thirty puppies, all second-generation Katrina dogs. “Is this the face of a stray dog?” asked Sherry Woodard, who oversaw kennel care for Best Friends’ Camp Tylertown as she held a puppy in her arms. “If we work together as a team, we can change their lives by getting them off the streets and placing them in homes.”

But just rounding up the pets wasn’t a cure-all. “It’s key to have a spay-neuter program,” Sherry Woodard said. “If the strays go into the system at animal control, what’s going to happen to them? They need to be placed in experienced foster homes. This is a huge opportunity to make a difference for animals in the entire region.”

Another problem facing displaced pets was the construction underway in many parts of the city, as bulldozer operators went where animals were still hiding. In late November 2005, in what has been dubbed the Great Trailer Park Rescue, teams were able to temporarily halt the razing of a mobile home park until frightened cats could be trapped and taken to safety. Jane Garrison, director at the time of ARNO, said her group, along with volunteers from Alley Cat Allies, successfully saved a hundred cats—thirty of which Best Friends took in—from the wrecking ball. The aging trailers were, ironically, then demolished to make way for trailers supplied by FEMA for other hurricane victims.

Also in late November 2005, Jane called on building crews to seek rescue help if they spotted dogs or cats on construction sites. Thousands of animals were out there, she said, noting she didn’t think anyone could make an exact assessment as to just how many, but it was a lot. She suggested that animal control officers in the area drive around the city and see for themselves. The animals she and others were seeing on the streets had escaped the storm from their homes to get out of harm’s way. With cold winter weather approaching, the pets would die. She described it as an urgency to continue helping the animals. Other rescuers agreed, saying that when they drove around at night, their headlights would catch the bright eyes of cats sitting under abandoned cars.

Maura Gallagher, a volunteer at several area animal shelters, including Camp Tylertown, spent the last week of November making food and water drops in the heavily damaged Ninth Ward. The area continued to have a National Guard presence, with armed officers planted at security checkpoints to keep out looters.

It was that goal—to do right by the animals—that inspired long-term work throughout the region, much longer than anyone had predicted. For example, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals developed a major spay-neuter campaign across Louisiana and Mississippi. However, the urgency to continue rescuing came first, and that goal was to complete the rescue work that had begun in the days following Hurricane Katrina. Best Friends put out a plea in the form of a national news release, asking groups to remain in or return to the region. ARNO joined Best Friends in running the triage center called Celebration Station in a large former arcade building in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans. Part of the emphasis was on getting pets spayed and neutered to cut down on the number of Katrina strays having puppies and kittens on the street.

Best Friends’ rapid-response workers put together a plan to rescue every displaced pet they could find, said Paul Berry. Working together, the plan was to complete the final phase of the effort in two months by rescuing and adopting operations. It was the least rescuers could do for the left-behind pets of Hurricane Katrina. The final push was based at Celebration Station, which opened in late November 2005 and closed its doors on the last day of February 2006. During that final operation, an additional fifteen hundred animals were rescued and placed in homes, with a percentage reunited with their original people. Whether or not it was enough, it drove home the need for an exit plan for the next disaster. Among the animals saved during that final push was Red (whose story is told in chapter 10), the paralyzed Pit Bull who had emergency back surgery after his rescue and who would not have survived had Best Friends and ARNO not joined together at the Celebration Station triage center.

As for the government’s role, just weeks before the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in August 2006, the plight of thousands of New Orleans residents and their pets led to a new federal law—the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards (PETS) Act—that requires local and state governments to include household pets in their evacuation plans. It also provides federal funding for pet-friendly refugee shelters. Because of the dire experiences of Hurricane Katrina, animal owners will not have to choose between saving their own lives and remaining in a disaster-ravaged area with their pets only to have to abandon them later. The measure sent a clear message to local and state governments that what happened in New Orleans should never happen again in America, because people will put their own lives in jeopardy to stay with their pets.

The cry was heard. During future disasters, groups and government agencies will meet to iron out plans for animal shelters to be set up next door to human shelters so that evacuees can be with their pets. Thanks to the public outcry after New Orleans refugees were forced to abandon their pets, during Hurricane Rita (which hit two weeks after Katrina) Texas officials allowed people to evacuate with their animals.

In South Lake Tahoe in late June 2007, the Angora wildfire destroyed more than two hundred fifty homes and seventy-five commercial buildings. As residents of the Northern California mountain resort evacuated, rescue groups, shelters, and veterinary clinics in the area put out the word that they would keep people’s pets until residents were allowed to return to their homes and cabins. At an evacuation center erected inside the South Lake Tahoe Recreation Center Gymnasium, a place for residents’ pets was set up. Then, during Southern California’s October 2007 catastrophic wildfires, twenty-five hundred evacuated horses, cows, and other farm and ranch animals were housed at the Del Mar Racetrack’s stables and fairgrounds, with hundreds of volunteers helping to feed, water, and walk them. And when twenty thousand residents fled their fiery communities for Qualcomm Stadium, home to the San Diego Chargers, they were allowed to take their pets with them. An additional hundred or so horses were evacuated to Mission Bay’s Fiesta Island—an undeveloped five-mile-circumference park in San Diego—until residents were allowed back into their neighborhoods.

In May 2006, I visited the former Camp Tylertown rescue center one last time. For nearly nine months, Pam Perez and Heidi Krupp had opened their sanctuary to the lost animals of Katrina. When base camp closed, a skeleton crew—Sherry Woodard, John Garcia, Mackenzie Garcia, Austin Soto, and Mary Lichtenberger—with a baker’s dozen dogs in tow, were going home. Standing on the grounds of the camp, the mostly vacant lawns where scores of tents and campers had once stood were in stark contrast to what had been. When I returned that final time, there was a nostalgic feel about the place.

On May 10, without fanfare, the last thirteen dogs left Camp Tylertown. Included were the toughest of the tough, the most challenging of whom was Obed—goofy and playful, but unpredictable. “He’ll bite,” said Sherry Woodard. His original family was located, but they decided to give up the eight-year-old Lab-Pointer mix. Sherry was optimistic: “Obed can change. He just hasn’t yet.” It is exactly that mind-set, giving every dog a chance, that has turned around scores of dogs with training and TLC.

Another of the behavioral-issue dogs to leave the rescue center was Alex, a Rottweiler mix found in a trailer park next to a jail. Niblet, a rambunctious old black Lab mix, also was one of the last remaining dogs. So, too, was Meatball, a Rottweiler who was rescued six weeks after the hurricane, starving but still able to threaten strangers. Meatball became a favorite with the staff, especially because of his love affair with a cinder block. “He carries it around with him like a toy,” Sherry said. “It’s his security blanket. He tosses it around and tries to push his nose into the hole.” The only dog in the bunch without behavior issues was Angel, an aging Chow-Lab mix who was returned to base camp when her new family discovered she had lung cancer.

“They’re special dogs who will need special people. They’re still working on their skills,” said Sherry, who ran the kennels and oversaw animal care all those months. Sherry walked those remaining dogs in the yard one last time before putting them in an air-conditioned transport van heading out of Camp Tylertown.

After they left, I sat on the porch at Kitty City at St. Francis and looked out on the now-calm grounds. Except for the dogs playing in the grass just after breakfast, it was quiet. Months earlier, hustle and bustle had started at each first light and had continued well into the night. I remembered the concerned faces of the volunteers and staffers running around doing their jobs. Then it was a mini-city alive with activity.

One volunteer described the base camp like this: “Tylertown was to the animal community what Woodstock was to the music community. I’ll never forget the rows and rows of kennels, tents, and cars with license plates from every state and Canada.”

Without fail, new volunteers hit the ground running even before they set up their tents. Before they arrived, many weren’t sure exactly what their roles would be, but as soon as they set foot on the grounds at the Camp Tylertown hurricane relief center, they fell into step and pulled their weight. One day into it and it was as if they had always been there.

The result was a remarkable collaborative effort, with work done by people from all walks of life. Nobody questioned the long hours. Everyone endured the heat and the onslaught of love bugs. People just got up, went to work, and started all over again each day. We had a common purpose: the animals.

When word rang out late at night—often past midnight—that a transport truck had arrived with more rescued animals, people pulled themselves out of bed and went to work like an army troop. No one gave it a second thought. Veterinarians and vet techs were at the ready, waiting to help the animals who needed immediate medical care.

Watching the dogs and cats come in, lost and frightened, and then witnessing them come back to life when they realized the storm was over, was something to see. The animals recognized that they were finally out of harm’s way and in safe hands once more. The obvious relief on the part of the pets was what drove us.

The enormity of the storm did not hit most of us until afterward. At the time, we didn’t talk about the destruction and loss of life. It simply was what it was. Everybody just hunkered down and worked their hardest for the animals. Even now, when I close my eyes I can see the hub of activity and hear the buzz, whirring like a motor, in Camp Tylertown. I can see the cats in their kennels, playing with feather toys or taking naps. I can hear their purrs as I stop at their kennels. I can see the dogs playing on the grass, being cuddled by volunteers, or sunning in their runs. I can hear them bark as a new dog is walked past. And I can still hear Red, the disabled Pit Bull, howling at Celebration Station for someone to play ball with him.

Sitting on the porch at the former Camp Tylertown so many months later, I thought about what a tremendous place the center had been. The day before, I had gone with volunteer Mary Lichtenberger when she drove Himie, the message-in-a-bottle dog (whose tale is told in chapter 6), home to the town of Violet in St. Bernard Parish. Seeing Himie, one of the early rescues, return home to Gary Karcher was a fitting ending. Just as they had for Himie, all the pieces fell into place for so many rescued dogs and cats—even parrots, lizards, ferrets, pigs, fish, spiders, and birds.

St. Francis, run by Pam and Heidi, is still an animal sanctuary, but now it is so much more. It stands as a symbol and a testament to the displaced pets of Katrina and Rita. Despite the odds, many animals survived and still more went home to their families. As good as Camp Tylertown was, along with a handful of other animal rescue shelters in the region, it can be even better next time because of the legislation now in place to help people’s pets and because of what we learned from Katrina.

Camp Tylertown was indeed about the animals. I, for one, along with like-minded volunteers who converged on the region, will never forget them: Jellybean the Pit Bull, who thought he was a Toy Poodle; Big Bird the emu, who stood bravely among dogs and cats on a three-hour ride back to base camp; and Itty Bitty, the two-and-a-half-pound Chihuahua who walked tall.