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I went to Lamar-Dixon on Sept. 29 as an emergency DART (Disaster Animal Response Team) member. I was in Gonzales for seven days escorting owners through the barns.
On the seventh day, I was asked to take ten volunteers to Plaquemines Parish to see how we could help. Fifty-mile-per-hour winds and floodwaters up to 23 feet had turned the parish into a Salvador Dali painting. Houses lifted off their foundations were huddled together, shrimp boats had floated to the middle of the highways, and cows were trapped in trees. Four weeks after the storm, the floodwaters were still high and locals were not permitted to check on their pets. The parish president had committed to a temporary emergency shelter to house animals indefinitely so the residents would have a chance to find them.
When I arrived in Plaquemines, the people running the shelter had already been working nonstop for four weeks. Dr. Stephen “Doc” Hebert was asked to set up and run the emergency shelter at the Center on Aging building, a place normally reserved for poker, pool, and shuffleboard. Doc had called all of the contacts he knew, including local colleagues, the local nonprofit animal organization, national animal welfare groups, FEMA, and VMAT (Veterinary Medical Assistance Team). He had gleaned basic supplies and a few wire crates in the first week. The National Guard brought in a fence to enclose the yard. Best Friends Animal Society brought six kennels that Doc used to house his most dog-aggressive dogs to get them away from the main population.
Dogs and cats were arriving by the dozens every day, and volunteers were struggling to prioritize need. They were pushing for spay/neuter programs, grooming protocols, and toys when basic food/water/shelter care still hadn’t been provided. Animals were flooding in; 120 dogs roamed a two-acre yard. Fighting and mating were common, but volunteers were setting up “kitty spa days” to offer feline massage and nail trims. Some people offered help but instead took pictures of the “deplorable” conditions and shook their heads without participating in the effort to improve those conditions. The day before I arrived, VMAT staff had asked several volunteers to leave. Feelings were hurt and rumors started to spread that Doc wasn’t interested in help from the outside. So many people had arrived with good intentions but little to no training, and the people of Plaquemines were growing weary of outsiders.
On our first day in Plaquemines, I met with Ray Ferrer, the head of the health department, to figure out what HSUS could do for them. He was guarded, and every word he said sounded like “no.” Once he had told me they didn’t want “help with an agenda,” I understood where he was coming from. We explained that we weren’t there to export their animals, exploit their hardship, or attempt to use them to change animal welfare in Louisiana. I said again and again that we just wanted to help them take care of the animals during the emergency; we would follow their lead. We were allowed in with caution, and the 10 volunteers bent over backwards to prove what we’d said. By the end of that first day, they had all 120 dogs in crates HSUS had provided. We set up protocols for cleaning and care, assisted VMAT and Doc with medical attention, and helped organize the facility so it could run for as long as necessary. The emergency shelter was in operation from September 3 until December 21. After the emergency shelter was dismantled, volunteers continued to care for nearly 70 animals in temporary housing at the old “dog pound” and were beginning to look for ways to create a municipal shelter.
I stayed in Plaquemines for two weeks. I’ve been back twice since. Doc and his wife Patsy are like family to me now; I even spent Thanksgiving Day with their family. I may be too close to them to be objective. But I have to say their experience opened my eyes to a lot of problems that the animal welfare community faces.
The hundreds of agendas that are possible within animal welfare seem to cause friction and dissent among the people who are “here for the animals.” At Animal Care Expo last year, I heard a lot of talk about finding common ground to create a network within our local animal welfare communities. The disaster in New Orleans prompted me to work harder at creating a network in our local area in case we ever need the help, but it also left me frustrated with the lack of a national network, a national agenda. As a community we did an amazing job helping where we could and flooding the area with motivated volunteers, but I found that in many cases we got in our own way by losing compassion for the people.
This was overall a positive experience. Volunteers from Red Cross, FEMA, the National Guard, and others set up a temporary family to take care of the victims and each other. For me, this disaster showed that we could do more good as an industry if we took a stand about how we should treat the people, not just the animals. Louisiana has a different way of doing things, and it was in no way our right to push our agenda on them during their time of need. I found people willing to listen to me when I was willing to listen to them. If I didn’t lecture about hunting, breeding, and fighting, I had a better chance of talking to them about microchipping, spay/neuter, and basic medical care. I have a little hope that the Animals in Disaster conference this spring will give some thought to priorities in disasters. I also hope we as a community will start a discourse regarding a humane approach to animal welfare in rural communities.
Veronica (Ronnie) Marjerison is the Kennel Manager at the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria in Virginia.
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