Katrina Animals Pets ~ September 11, 2005

The Katrina Animal Rescue Resources webpage remains current.
Note: The Katrina Animals Pets posts on this blog are mainly focused on larger or national animal rescue group efforts along with the local animal groups in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas. There are many local efforts of animal groups across the nation. Check your local newspapers and media outlets or ask your local animal groups.

As before, I direct you to:
Katrina National Animal Rescue Groups - Katrina Animal Action Daily Updates: [such as they are!!!]

* Noah’s Wish
* UAN/EARS
* HSUS
* Best Friends
* ASPCA
* AHA
* Katrina.Petfinder.org

See also Animal Rescue Resources on Katrina Help Wiki
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Katrina Animals Pets Issues ~ September 9, 2005

Today's Katrina Animals Pets News


San Antonio Experts Join IFAW to Move Hundreds of Rescued Animals
9/11/2005 12:04:00 PM
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To: City and State desks
Contact: Chris Cutter of International Fund for Animal Welfare, 508-744-2066 or ccutter@ifaw.org
[Excerpt]
GONZALES, La., Sept. 11 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Animal experts from the San Antonio-based Wild Animal Orphanage (WAO) are today departing for Gonzales, La., where they will collect more than 200 dogs and other animals rescued by the International Fund for Animal Welfare's (IFAW -- http://www.ifaw.org ) Emergency Relief Team.
The IFAW team has rescued the animals over the last few days from flooded out areas of New Orleans, using boats and skilled water rescue experts.
WAO and IFAW will use the WAO Humane Train convoy of animal truck trailers to collect the animals, specially designed and operated vehicles set up to carry both large and small animals. The animals are expected to be moved on Monday to the Houston SPCA, where IFAW has assisted the staff there to set up a temporary shelter at an unused Volkswagen car dealership. The facility is set up and vets are on stand-by to receive the incoming animals.
IFAW's team, working with Code-3 Associates, is currently searching a list of more than 300 addresses where animals are reported to be stranded. To date more than 3,500 requests have been fielded, by rescuers, from people looking for lost pets in the New Orleans area alone. The list of requests is being maintained by the Louisiana ASPCA and compiled by various organizations and agencies around the country that have collected data from concerned pet owners. (IFAW Missing Pet Database -- http://www.ifaw.org/us/missingpets ).

Yesterday newspaper and television news stated aerial spraying would begin in New Orleans, today Sunday September 11. Here is a related news article from September 8:
[Excerpt]
910th Airlift Wing Spray Units Deployed to New Orleans
VIENNA, Ohio -- The 910th Airlift Wing aerial spray unit at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station is being deployed today to New Orleans to begin spraying operations to stop the transmission of water-borne infectious diseases.
Public health officials fear the toxic waters that still cover more than half of the city are dangerous breeding grounds for insects that malaria, West Niles virus and encephalitis.
Two C-130s from the base and nearly 50 Air Force Reservists are being sent to Duke Field in Florida from where they will be deployed first to New Orleans and then, if required, to the remaining areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama hit hard by Hurricane Katrina.
The 910th crews will work closely with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Centers for Disease Control, officials said. The insects that will be targeted are primarily mosquitoes and filth flies that are capable of transmitting malaria, West Nile virus, encephalitis and other diseases.
?The product that will be used to combat the disease-spreading insects is dibrom, which is an extremely effective material for mosquito control, and at the amounts that will be applied, is an extremely safe material as well,? said? Karl Haagsma, a research entomologist and Air Force Reserve captain with the 910th Airlift Wing.
?Typically we apply dibrom at a rate of 1/2 to 1 ounce per acre,? he explained. ?When properly applied at these application rates, dibrom is virtually non-toxic to humans, while eliminating a majority of the flying mosquito population.?
Each aerial spray-modified C-130H is capable of spraying about 60,000 acres per day, officials said. Spray missions are normally conducted at dusk when the insects are most active.

Yesterday it was said that admission and release or transfer of rescued animals was halted at the Lamar Dixon shelter in Gonzales Louisiana. Some stated there was a 15-day quarantine imposed by the Louisiana State Veterinarian. So animal rescuers came in with many animals and nowhere to take them. Also, that shelter is at capacity.
On the ASPCA Hurricane Rescue Diary update from evening September 10, it is stated that there is a 24-hour moratorium on admission to the staging area and that the state vet wants animals held thirty days to increase chances of reuniting animals with guardians/owners.

New Orleans pet rescue account on September 10, 2005 from Gulfsails blog (web log)
Tetanus Shots and a Regimen of Augmentin - It's Good For You!
[Excerpts]
At 8:00am this morning our 'team' of pet rescuers headed out to the boat launch at the intersection of Veterans Highway and Fleur De Lis... that's on the overpass that crosses the 17th St. Canal where you drive from fair normality to extreme devastation and uninhabitability.
Our team is made up of one veternarian, one Iberia Humane Society member, one St. Mary Humane Society member, a New Orleans lawyer who's home in Lakeview had four feet of water in it, and myself... one of the amazing things you'll understand after you keep reading is that our 'team' definately grew larger... regular old New Orleanians who simply wanted to do something were coming up and volunteering on the spot. Even if it was just to sit there and talk to the cats, they all wanted to do something to help.

Town of Gonzales handling 1600 evacuated pets
KLFY, LA
Cats, dogs, birds, horses and other pets or farm animals are living at the ... The animals were left stranded when their owners evacuated during Hurricane Katrina. ...

Rescues centering more on animals
2theadvocate.com, LA
Advocate staff photo by PAUL RUTHERFORD Judy Swinger of Richmond, Va., sits in a truck with two dogs she helped rescue in New Orleans' 9th Ward Saturday afternoon.
NEW ORLEANS -- The ranks of humans in need of rescue in the New Orleans area have thinned, but rescue workers are still dealing with a second wave of creatures in need of evacuation -- pets.
Though volunteers with the U.S. Humane Society and state chapters of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are working the streets of the city mostly emptied by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, they aren't the only ones keeping an eye out for the animals left behind.
Officers with the U.S. Border Patrol and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency have pitched into help animal rescuers, as have members of out-of-state fire and police departments.
Meanwhile, an increasing problem for the people trying to save the lost pets is where to put them until owners show up for them, if they do.
Joe Brocato, a member of a Maryland-based search-and-rescue task force, on Saturday had an idea to solve that problem for one lost puppy that waded through the toxic muck still present throughout the Ninth Ward area.
As he rolled up in a four-wheeler to a decontamination station run by Illinois firefighters to get the muddy beaglish-looking dog washed off, a member of his team called out, "That guy going home with you?"
"He might," Brocato said.
Brocato said he will likely adopt the animal, and considers spotting the lost and stranded animals part of his job.
"A life is a life," he said.
Ed Rogers, a firefighter with the Utica, Ill. Fire Department, said rescue workers are finding stray and trapped animals everywhere.
He said one of his crews had recently found a poodle trapped without food or water in a bathroom, while another seeking humans in need of help had a dog follow them out of the area they were working.
Rogers said the his crew's base is currently shelter to about 30 dogs.
"There's a bunch of firefighters that have adopted kittens," he said. "If they're female, guess what they're naming them."
That'd be Katrina, for those keeping score at home.
Rick Quillin, an investigator with Caddo Parish Animal Services, was working near the Illinois contingent's operation Saturday, driving a pickup with a trio of muddy and exhausted dogs.
He said he was not happy with what he sees as a lack of planning for what to do with the animals.
"We don't have any place to put them," Quillin said. "They say don't pick up an more dogs
Animal rescuers from around the city say they've been told that the animal shelters in parishes as far away as Lafayette -- including Ascension's Lamar-Dixon Expo Center, which was intended to be the primary shelter for animals from southeast Louisiana -- are packed.
Quillin, working with a band of volunteers from Texas, Virginia, Missouri and other states, said that wasn't going to stop him from rescuing the dogs and cats he's been seeing.
"We came here to try and help get some animals," he said.
Quillin worked his cell phone Saturday, calling back to his home parish and as far north as Arkansas to find people willing to take the animals he's found.
Some pet owners have managed to get in touch with him directly, giving him addresses and asking him to check on their pets.
"Most of these people thought they were going to be gone two days," Quillin said. "It's been nearly two weeks."
He said a particular problem he's having on the east side of New Orleans is that so many houses have been fortified heavily against potential criminals.
In one case Saturday, Quillin said he went to the home of pet owner, and heard a dog barking inside, but he could do nothing to reach it.
"We can't get into the house because the bars are so strong," he said.
DEA officers offered to help in that case and even they couldn't get a door open, Quillin said.
Quillin said he was also carrying doses of sodium pentathol to help ease the suffering of animals to injured or sick to be saved.
Further west, a pair of workers with the SPCA of Texas, were working the sludge-laden streets Saturday to find and feed stray and stranded animals.
Tipped by officers with the U.S. Border Patrol, Collin Chilson and Nicole Powell found a puppy that sprinted out of a smashed house to greet them even before they broke the food and water out.
After the food came out, another pair of dogs came splashing through the muck from across the street.
Chilson noted the address while Powell put down food and water, but Chilson noted that the SPCA and Humane Society workers are only taking in animals that are either injured or sick from malnutrition or dehydration.
"We're completely out of room at Lamar-Dixon, so pretty much what we're doing here is setting food and water for all dogs," he said.
In the meantime, workers are taking down the addresses of where they are finding animals.
At a triage center set up in the Sav-A-Center Supermarket parking lot at the Napoleon Avenue-Tchoupitoulas for the animals who need medical care, veterinarian Celeste Gilbert said that Lamar-Dixon is still making room for injured animals.
She said that the volunteers at the triage site and at Lamar-Dixon are seeking any help they can get, but especially need volunteers.

Heifer International animals, barns not spared by Katrina
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (subscription), AR
... must "pass on the gift" by giving one or more of the animals’ offspring to ... Muntz said he’s afraid damage from Hurricane Katrina could be a crippling blow ...

Uniting pets, families is an emotional task
San Diego Union Tribune, United States
... The Louisiana SPCA had to stop picking up healthy animals yesterday, and instead took only the most ill or most in peril to its crowded shelter at a ...

Five days in Louisiana
BurlingtonFreePress.com, VT
[Scroll down to]
Animal suffering
When locals evacuated before Hurricane Katrina and in the days following its destructive swipe, pet owners left thousands of animals behind to fend for themselves. An officer from the Jefferson Parish Animal Shelter said Wednesday that she had picked up 300 cats and dogs since the previous Friday. They were being taken to a shelter 80 miles away. The Guardsmen saw dozens of abandoned pets on their patrols.Late Tuesday night, cats and dogs roamed the Lacs neighborhood. One gray and white kitten darted through the bushes when the soldiers sat on the stoop of an apartment for a brief rest. The green-eyed cat was scrawny and affection-starved. Overcoming its initial apprehension, the cat wound through the soldiers' legs, climbed onto their laps, purred. The soldiers stroked the kitty, but they had no food to give. They had to leave the kitten behind. They stood and picked up their gear, and the kitten, startled, dashed away. Later, the soldiers trooped past a house where a dog barked plaintively from the back yard. Sgt. Glenn Mayo, 39, of Barre walked to the lopsided wooden fence and peered through a crack. He saw a black dog that appeared to be a Labrador retriever mix. The dog was tethered by a leash. Mayo scaled the fence and planned to cut the pooch loose. But he found a dish full of water and a pile of food, and decided the owners at least occasionally must be looking in on the animal. He climbed back over the fence, leaving the dog barking.The next day, another squad of soldiers visited the Terrytown Fire Department to help hand out meals to locals. That morning, a black Lab the firefighters had never seen before limped into their station. He was so skinny his ribs were visible. The dog was loving and craved a scratch behind the ears as much as he craved food and the firefighters and the Vermonters gave him plenty of both. The dog curled up under a table where the soldiers were eating lunch. The men fed him crackers and bread from their government-supplied Meals Ready to Eat. Firefighters talked briefly about adopting the pooch, but after several hours a fire department supervisor summoned animal control to take the dog away.Red Cross aid