Tragedy and Triumph – Five Years After Katrina
August 25th, 2010 | 
Author: 
Every year around this time I receive calls and emails from individuals I worked alongside or families I reunited in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Although it has been five years, the bonds that were cemented during our rescue work in New Orleans will last a lifetime. We will never forget the horrors we witnessed there, and the thousands of animals we pulled from the wreckage of the submerged crescent city. I can scarcely believe half a decade has passed since I stepped into the worst natural disaster our country has ever known.
At that time I was the Executive Director of the Washington Animal Rescue League. As soon as Katrina hit the Gulf Coast I assembled a rescue team, and was one of the first responders on the ground. I knew we were entering uncharted territory when we passed the first city checkpoint and a crowd of desperate-looking people charged our vehicle and threw their keys through our open windows. The keys were wrapped in paper with the people’s names, telephone numbers, addresses and the description of the animals who were trapped in their homes. When I saw the horde of individuals on their knees, tears streaming down their faces, begging us to rescue their animals, I knew this mission would change my life forever.
During our six weeks in New Orleans our team rescued nearly 1,000 animals who had lost all hope of surviving the grim disaster. We scaled dilapidated buildings to pluck emaciated animals from rooftops, pulled cats out of putrid, debris-laden waters and found dogs who had been left to die, stranded for weeks in flooded homes. Each rescue was unique, but every animal shared an initial look of wild desperation, which melted into trust and gratitude once we held them tightly in our arms of compassion.
Our team was the first inside these houses for days or weeks after the storm. We were the only lifeline for people clinging to the hope that their companions would be found alive. It was heartbreaking to tell someone who had lost everything that their cherished friend didn’t make it, but an honor to deliver the news to others that their animals had survived.
As soon as we plucked one animal from death’s door we were off to respond to another plea for help. The calls never stopped, our rescue vehicles seemed constantly full, as we perpetually raced the clock in a desperate fight against time. Inevitably, we were too late to save some – it is these lost souls who push me on a daily basis to continue my life’s work.
In the five years since, animal guardians have made huge strides in efforts to include pets in disaster preparedness. President Bush signed the PETS Act into law in 2006, allowing communities to receive funds for including companion animals in disaster preparedness plans. Communities and individuals are much better prepared to ensure their pets’ safety in the wake of nature’s unpredictable fury.
IDA played a crucial role in the post-Katrina response efforts. We delivered supplies to Gulf Coast emergency shelters and transported hundreds of displaced animals to shelters in the north. Today IDA’s rescue team is poised and ready to save animals from both man-made and natural catastrophes. Click here to support our life-saving efforts.
Posted in Animal Rescue, Animals in Disasters, Featured News, Guardian, Home Page Features | 
Tags: Animals in Disasters, Cats, Disaster Relief, Dogs, Guardian, Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi, New Orleans, Pit Bull, rescue
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Maybe this poem will tell the world why us animal lovers don’t abandon and/or abuse our animals.
RAGS
They called him Rags, he was just a cur
But twice on that Western Line
That little bundle of faithful fur
Offered his life for mine.
All he got was bones and bread
and the leaving of soldiers’grub,
but he’d give his heart for a pat on the head,
a friendly tickle, or rub.
Rags got home with the regiment,
and then, in the breaking away–,
whether they stole him, or whether he went,
I am not prepared to say.
But we mustered out, some to beer and gruel,
and some to sherry and shad,
and I went back to the Sawbones School,
where I was an undergrad.
One day they took us budding M.D.’s
to one of those institutes
where they demonstrate every new disease
By means of bisected brutes.
They had one animal tacked and tied
and slit like a full-dressed fish,
with his vitals pumping away inside,
as pleasant as one might wish.
I stopped to look like the rest, of course,
And the beast’s eyes leveled mine,
His short tail thumped with a feeble force,
and he uttered a tender whine.
It was Rags, yes, Rags! who was martyred there,
who was quartered and crucified,
and he whined that whine which is doggish prayer,
Then he licked my hand, and died.
And I was no better in part or whole
than the gang I was found among,
And his innocent blood was on the soul
which he blessed with his dying tongue.
Well, I’ve seen men go to courageous death
In the air, on sea, and land!
But only a dog would spend his dying breath
for a kiss on his murderer’s hand.
And if there’s no heaven for love like that
for such four legged fealtly –well!
If I have any choice, I tell you flat,
I’ll take my chance in hell.
I was moving across the country from Lansing, Michigan to Portland, Oregon during the first week of the nightmare that was Katrina. I crossed the border from Michigan to Ohio the exact hour the levees broke. Driving across the midwest farmlands and desolate desert Badlands alone for days was made even more eerie by the narrated horror coming over the radio of the plight of New Orleans. Most of the signals I could get were the kind of rightwing bigot Bush radio that features O’Reileys and Hannities. They kept repeating what a great job the president was doing. It was then I realized that another city had been lost under that man’s watch.
I was furious. People were locked inside football stadiums starving to death. Racists were shooting people of color in the street. Bodies were floating down the street while armed guards protected banks and big box stores from “looters”.
But amid the insane apologist propaganda were brief moments of honesty that rarely make their way into the media. I heard stories of rescue teams devoting man power and resources to rescuing animals, and it was then I knew that there were some very sane people operating in the city. Some argued that to care for an animal when human lives needed help was an insult to humanity.
Oh, how much the opposite was true.
So many lost family, their homes, their jobs, everything they had. To find their animal companion had been rescued was perhaps the only thing that kept them from going mad. It was the right thing to do then, and it will be the right thing to do the next time this happens.
[...] I shared with you some of my experiences in New Orleans during the Hurricane Katrina rescue. It will never be easy for me to revisit these memories. Since Hurricane Katrina, I have been [...]