Preventing dark realities from resurfacing
Even four years after Hurricane Katrina, Dark Water Rising remains disturbing not only to pet owners but to animals themselves. As the title sequence ends, the documentary follows Humane Society of the United States volunteers as they shimmy through the window of an abandoned New Orleans home to rescue the animals trapped inside. Cats—who haven’t seen a human in nearly a month—scamper for cover beneath the bathtub, where a dehydrated, emaciated, longhaired Chihuahua begins to howl.
The fear and desperation in the dog’s shrill distress call so unnerved my dogs, I had to turn off the video. That was only in the first five minutes. A few days later, I resumed viewing with a borrowed portable DVD player, earphones and a very low volume setting.
This powerful piece goes on to chronicle not only HSUS’s search and rescue missions and its Lamar-Dixon Expo Center shelter but renegade rescuers who prowled the city, the St. Bernard School shooting, the pit bull problem the hurricane exposed and the Dixon Correctional Center shelter.
The graphic, hour-long film captures the realities of working in the surreal, stressful environment from the urgency and danger of rescuing the animals to the unrelenting heat, humidity, mosquitoes, lawlessness, darkness and stench—all of which haunted rescuers more than a year after leaving the city.
While Renee Poirrier, DVM, has neither appeared in nor viewed Dark Water Rising, she was and is still an integral part of the story. Between Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Lafayette veterinarian was deployed by the fledgling Louisiana State Animal Response Team (LSART) at Lamar-Dixon. For two weeks, she worked nearly 24 hours a day along with several other vets to triage and treat injured animals.
“Katrina was an unusual situation because the people responsible for search and rescue had communications lines down, and Animal Control was down and normal calls had no place to go,” recalls Poirrier, now LSART’s director. “With Rita, the Lake Charles shelter was not destroyed and they were able to communicate, take calls and become responsive.”
The Katrina tragedy was exacerbated by a combination of bad judgment and bad policy: First, New Orleanians afflicted with “Ivan syndrome” left pets at home with a few days’ supply of food and water. They believed the warning was a false alarm and planned to return home within 48 hours—just as they did after Hurricane Ivan turned toward the Gulf Shores, Ala.
Compounding the problem, Federal Emergency Management Agency directives forbid its transports to accept owners evacuating with pets and, later, prohibited search and rescue teams from picking up pets along with hurricane survivors. As a result, only 15% of the estimated 50,000 pets left in the city were ever reunited with owners.
Since President George W. Bush signed the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act (championed as the No Pets Left Behind) in October 2006, states seeking FEMA assistance must accommodate pets and service animals in evacuation plans.
Toward that end, the Louisiana Legislature passed Act 615. “It requires animal handling facilities such as vets, boarding and non-profits to have an evacuation plan filed with the parishes and Department of Agriculture,” says Poirrier. “The parishes have to have plans for people who own pets. There are regional shelters to co-locate pets.”
In Shreveport, the evacuee shelters are within driving distance of freestanding animal shelters. In Monroe, the animal shelter is within walking distance of shelter housing, and in Alexandria, Animal Control serves as the pet shelter.
In any region of the state, officials estimate 90% of the population is capable of evacuating itself and its pets. To help the remaining 10% with pet evacuation, LSART has recruited a volunteer corps that coordinates the identification and transportation of animals to shelters 30 hours before contraflow begins.
Small animals in carriers are now allowed to ride with their owners to a shelter. Volunteers crate larger animals and place them refrigerated 18-wheelers, which can accommodate up to 92 carriers. The transports stop every two hours, so rescue workers can open the doors for 30 minutes of ventilation to make sure the pets receive enough oxygen. Once the pets safely arrive, their care becomes their owners’ responsibility.
With post-Katrina legislation, parish plans and LSART procedures solidly in place, both owners and rescuers can now take comfort Louisiana’s pets will never again be forced to face dark water rising.
For more information about transportation assistance with animals, visit lsart.org.
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