Animal Rescue in place on 8/29. So why this mess?

[rumpel]

All press releases from:
http://www.avma.org/

August 29

Schaumburg, Ill.
— Many of Katrina's victims will be those least able to help themselves — animals. So who will be there for the animals injured in this devastating storm? Veterinary Medical Assistance Teams (VMAT), established by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) and funded primarily by the American Veterinary Medical Foundation (AVMF), are working as part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) to care for injured animals, as well as provide advice concerning public health issues.
As Katrina neared landfall, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deployed two fully-staffed VMAT teams, VMAT-3 led by Dr. James Hamilton and VMAT-5 led by Dr. Garry Goemann, and stationed a separate disaster assessment team in Houston, Texas with VMAT representative, Dr. Barry Kellogg, VMAT-1 Deputy Team Commander. Twenty-five VMAT members are on the ground in Anniston, Alabama, while another 22 members are making their way from Memphis, Tennessee to New Orleans ready to assist the local veterinary community with animal victims as soon as it is safe to do so.

VMAT personnel consist of veterinarians, veterinary technicians, scientists, epidemiologists, toxicologists, pathologists, pharmacists and other support personnel trained to assist the local veterinary communities provide medical care to injured animals, help coordinate animal relief efforts on site, and address public health issues.

September 2

FEMA Deploys Veterinarians to Assist Hurricane Recovery
Veterinary Medical Assistance Teams Help Ensure Animal, Public Health

Schaumburg, Ill.
— For the first time in their 11- year history, four complete Veterinary Medical Assistance Teams (VMAT) have been simultaneously deployed by the federal government. Staged in neighboring communities since Tuesday, each of the approximately 60-member teams have now moved into Katrina-ravaged areas to provide assistance.
Two teams, VMAT-1 and VMAT-5, have arrived in Baton Rouge, La. They will assist the state veterinarian with agricultural and veterinary facility assessments, assess the needs of Audubon zoo animals, horses, and animals at drop-off locations.

VMAT-3 has been deployed to Camp Shelby, Miss., while VMAT-2 is stationed at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss.

September 5

Animals are being evacuated from veterinary hospitals, homes and other locations where they have been stranded. Though the situation is unstable in some areas and some rescue missions have been delayed due to safety concerns, animal rescue is a priority.

New Orleans mules, a familiar site in the French Quarter have been rescued. Without carts and tourists to pull, however, it looks like they are out of a job too.

There are eight animal shelters located at strategic locations across Louisiana. Two types of hurricane refugee animals are housed at these facilities: those with known owners, many in nearby shelters themselves, and those with unknown owners. These animals are being photographed and their images are being posted at www.vetmed.lsu.edu.

The three largest pet shelters in Louisiana are at the Parker Coliseum on the campus of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, the Lamar Dixon Equestrian Center in Gonzales and the Blackmon Coliseum in Lafayette.

What happened? And why is there still so much confusion?

[lindisfarne]

1. The issues with animal rescue result from certain areas not giving access

to the rescuers for days - and still are restricting many from entering, and there being far more animals which need rescue than there are rescuers who are being allowed in. In Slidell, noahswish.org got early access and were able to rescue many animals very quickly.

NOTE: anyone near Gonzales LA - the shelter there desperately needs volunteers. As more and more animals come in, the job of caring for the animals is overwhelming the personnel and volunteers they have there.

The problem also comes from policies which restricted evacuees from taking animals with them on buses - had these animals been allowed to evacuate with their owners, there would be hundreds - thousands fewer animals to rescue.

We need to change the policies of this country. People need to feel that hotels will waive rules against animals, for example, in times of disasters. Authorities need to allow animals to be evacuated with their owners Initially, when so many people desperately needed rescuing, there might have been some justification in denying large animals if the evacuation was happening by helicopter or boat, but there was no justification for denying animals access to buses (certain buses could have been designated for animals and their owners - and these people would have had to deal with any problems the animals caused on the buses. There was also no justification at all for denying smaller animals access to helicopters, boats, or buses.

Many of the boats doing rescues were private, and their owners were heroes for risking their lives to rescue people - unfortunately, not all the boat owners felt animals were important. It's hard to impose any kind of rules on such volunteers. But we do need to work on changing Americans' views of animals. We need to put pressure on all hotels to allow animals. We need to get the word out that in disasters, people can find shelters close to - but outside of the disaster areas - to put their animals in. Finally, I personally would sleep in my car (assuming I had one!) with my pet before I'd leave it in the very place I was evacuating.

After this disaster, we need to start a very vigorous dialog about these issues with the American public.

Edited to add: Much was done by many animal shelters in the affected areas to evacuate the pets they had, which greatly helped - those animals were cared for and weren't taking up valuable resources which are now being used to care for rescued animals and animals which were evacuated but temporarily need shelter.

[rumpel]

2. Owners of animals will have to be informed of the plans for the pets. I

have owned animals all my life. I had no clue FEMA had a plan until after the Katrina disaster.
There has to be a comprehensive plan, and most importantly, coordination among all governmental agencies top to bottom, which then has to be communicated to the general public. What good is a plan if no one knows about the plan.

During the wildfires and the Northridge earthquake, I had a sense that agencies were in control and quite organized.

Waiting for the Big One, fire or earthquake, I never felt so vulnerable and distrustful of the abilities of this govenment to help anyone.

We should all be informed in advance of a disaster where the people have to go, and if pets are not allowed, where the pets have to go, so much pain and agony could have been spared.