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“Animal Groups Save Scores of Lost Pets; 'Rescue Rig' Arrives”

By AVERY JOHNSON And RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN

The Wall Street Journal

September 6, 2005

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Rescuers are racing to save some of Hurricane Katrina's most vulnerable victims: pets.

Animal-welfare groups have come to the Gulf Coast with mobile veterinary units, holding pens for farm animals and traps to ensnare frightened animals. They've been running high-risk missions to rescue stranded creatures, transport them to shelters on safer ground and reunite them with their owners, many of whom had to abandon the pets when fleeing the storm.

The efforts have drawn crews of rescue teams from all over the country. Some groups, with highly skilled veterinarians and seasoned animal-rescue professionals, use fancy vehicles and equipment, while other groups consist of little more than die-hard animal lovers sleeping in the back seats of their cars.

The American Humane Association dispatched an 82-foot blue "Animal Rescue Rig" from Denver, which costs $6,000 a day to operate and comes with an ambulance that can be driven into the back, three rescue boats, showers, and enough fuel and water for a month. A group called Code 3 Associates from Longmont, Cola., brought a 77-foot tractor-trailer that weighs 74,000 pounds and has a horse trailer and veterinary triage center. Meanwhile, Dr. Kent Glenn, an Aledo, Texas, veterinarian, raised $1,250 from his clinic's clients Saturday morning and the next day headed out to Hattiesburg, Miss. in a Dodge pickup hitched to a 20-foot cattle trailer to help out.

The hurricane's fury left an estimated tens of thousands of animals-including pets, livestock, zoo and aquarium creatures- stranded in muddy waters and dilapidated buildings. Many human refugees fleeing the storm didn't have space or money to take their animals with them. Those left in New Orleans often weren't allowed to take their animals into the city's makeshift shelters at the Superdome and Convention Center-or on some of the evacuation buses, boats and airlifts out of the city.

As a result, animal-welfare charities and message boards are being inundated with calls and emails from Katrina refugees searching for their pets. [text cut]

Reaching the stranded creatures can be difficult. Most animal-aid groups were only allowed into New Orleans proper over the weekend and are struggling to get to buildings surrounded by water. At the Superdome late Sunday night and into yesterday morning, the Louisiana SPCA found many animals already dead from heat or dehydration, although they did manage to save between 30 and 50 dogs, including a mother with 11 puppies. Some teams are facing shortages of fuel, air-conditioned vans, animal cages and vet supplies. There also is a chance rescuers could find displaced alligators and poisonous snakes-if the reptiles don't find the homeless pets first.

Some aid workers have confronted stomach-turning conditions. Before dawn on Saturday, a coalition of rescue groups raided a Gulfport, Miss., animal shelter, which had been flooded with almost three feet of water and sewage because it had been located between the water and the town's waste-treatment plant.

When the team of rescuers arrived at the shelter, the stench of rotting carcasses and human and animal waste was overwhelming, says Warren Craig, director of communications and logistics with Code 3 Associates, which participated in the mission.

Still, rescuers managed to pull about 120 animals from the wreckage alive. Hundreds more died in the part of the shelter that had completely flooded. The survivors are now being cleaned, given veterinary care and shipped to shelters in Birmingham, Ala.

Animal-welfare groups also are grappling with the logistics of housing and feeding hundreds of suddenly homeless animals. The Houston SPCA estimates it will have received about 900 refugee animals as of the end of the day yesterday. About 400 of them had been smuggled onto buses out of New Orleans by their owners, who later discovered pets weren't allowed in the Astrodome.

In Austin, Texas, Lynn and Jud Shelton arrived at the convention center on Saturday with their two dogs, Li'l Bit and Belle; a black cat named Sammy, who was nestled in Mr. Shelton's backpack; and a cockatiel named Trixie, housed in a cumbersome two-by-three-foot metal cage that the couple had been carrying around for almost a week. When the Sheltons fled their house, one of the first things they grabbed-besides the animals-was a large plastic bag full of pet food.

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"There was no way we would leave them," says Mrs. Shelton, who is 60 years old. "Everything else was gone."