By Sharon L. Peters
USA TODAY
NEW ORLEANS — Storm-battered, sleep-deprived animal care and rescue teams were counting the minutes Monday until they would be allowed to go into Gustav-damaged areas and tend to abandoned animals that survived.
“We’re aware that animals were left in backyards, and we’re getting phone calls from people asking us to check on them,” says Rich Crook of Best Friends Animal Society, which sent volunteers to Louisiana last week to help with animal-related preparations and rescues after the storm.
Rescuers must await the official go-ahead to enter storm-ravaged areas, but the Humane Society of the United States’ several teams scattered along the coast were hoping Monday afternoon to get clearance as early as this morning, and they’re prepared to deploy “anywhere there are animals in need,” the organization’s Scotlund Haisley says.
Lessons learned from Katrina
Experts say animal evacuations have been better handled than for Katrina, when thousands of animals died or were lost and never reunited with their owners. Pet-friendly evacuation centers and public transportation were provided for those without the means to drive north, and residents who used their own vehicles to seek higher ground seemed less likely to leave animals behind.
“The government officials and procedures have taken into account that people won’t leave without their pets and have made provisions for that,” says Linda Anderson, who with her husband, Allen, investigated Katrina and wrote Rescued: Saving Animals From Disaster, a clarion call for advance disaster planning for animals. “The intake procedures are organized and standardized so animals don’t get lost in the system. ... (The government) is working side by side with the animal groups.”
Dozens of experts from national animal groups who arrived on the Gulf Coast last week assisted with animal evacuations, cared for pets at evacuee centers, transported shelter animals to safer locales and rescued pets after the storm.
A scramble for supplies
More than 1,000 evacuee-owned dogs, cats, birds, bunnies, hamsters and iguanas -- and one snake -- were being cared for Monday at the Mega Shelter in Shreveport, says Sandy Monterose of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, one of several groups volunteering there.
“Everything is going smoothly,” she says, although shelter workers did have to make a weekend call to Pet Smart Charities to get specialty supplies for the unconventional pets. And Best Friends arranged for a rush shipment of 3,000 animal crates Saturday after discovering that many pet-toting people were arriving at pickup sites without them.