I volunteer with at-risk students at one of the most socio-economic poor schools in Houston, Texas. Within days after Hurricane Katrina our school became inundated with young evacuees living at shelters, with friends or family, or in run-down nearby apartments. For the rest of the year, the children would come, then disappear without a word as personal or FEMA funds ran dry while others showed up, transferring yet again to another new school for an indefinite period.
When reliving their experiences, these Katrina kids who lost everything -- their homes, all their possessions, friends, even family -- talked about what was most precious to them, their pets:
I jumped out of the boat. The water was this deep (pointing to her waist). I had to kiss my dog Lulu good-bye.
We were on the I-10 bridge. We had our pit bull named Rosy because her nose was red. They said we could not take Rosy with us. Do you think she’s okay?
My grandma didn’t come because she needed to stay with her cats.
Can dogs swim?
I originally wrote a version of Katrina’s Choice for a local Houston magazine following Hurricane Katrina. I include the article here with an update:
KATRINA'S CHOICE:
Sophie Zawistowska confronted a parent’s most horrific nightmare. Nazis gave her seconds to choose which of her children would live. She picked her 10-year-old son and watched her daughter be carried to the gas chamber.
William Styron’s chilling novel Sophie’s Choice stunned readers with such wretched barbarity. How could any of us cull loved ones to ensure another’s survival? Thankfully, a “Sophie’s Choice” exists only in fiction.
Or does it? Read these true stories of Katrina’s Choice:
After days in the hell-hole Superdome, rescue finally came. But as the traumatized child stepped onto the bus, an officer grabbed his only remaining possession, a little fur puff called Snowball. The child repeatedly screamed the puppy’s name then vomited.
An elderly man climbed into the rescue boat only after assurances his beloved dog Max could accompany him. The rescuers quickly maneuvered the boat away, leaving Max behind and the old man devastated.
Authorities told a man, who had sweltered for days on an I-10 overpass, that his 14-year-old dog, raised from a pup, could not enter the evacuation bus. He buried his head in the hound’s fur, refusing to leave, until a TV reporter took pity and promised to drive the dog to a Baton Rouge shelter.
Above the flood waters, a man clung to a tree with one hand, his other held his beloved 16-year-old dachshund mix for five days before rescue came. But he was informed his dog must be left behind. Instead, he killed her. He told a reporter, “I could not leave her alive in that tree. She was too old to survive.”
One woman offered rescuers her diamonds, including her wedding rings, in trade for her pets’ safety to no avail.
One man waded through neck-deep floodwaters pushing his “only child,” a cocker spaniel named Sebastian, on an air mattress. Told he couldn’t take Sebastian on the Houston-bound bus, the man stuffed the pooch into a black trash bag and begged him not to whimper.
One lady smuggled her beloved lovebird named Lola in her bra. A teen hid her two ferrets in the oversized pants pockets. A parakeet evacuated in a cosmetic case. Chihuahuas, puppies and kittens snuck to safety in purses. Evacuees pleaded with visiting TV crews to shelter their pups and kitties in network satellite vans.
On Day 9 of Katrina’s aftermath, authorities began shooting strays in the Louisiana parish with the ironic name of St. Bernard, a canine breed known to rescue stranded humans in the Alpine snow.
Of the tens of thousand of New Orleans residents who stubbornly refused to leave (not counting those who could not), 44 percent stayed because of their pets. They did so to confront their fetid destiny with the companion animals they cherished more than life itself.
Red Cross policy bans pets from evacuation shelters. Federal and state governments fail to participate in search-and-rescue efforts for pets, sometimes blocking volunteer agency efforts to do so.
Perhaps any comparison between a fictional human Holocaust and a real-life animal Armageddon is ludicrous. Perhaps in disasters, we must value human over animal lives. Perhaps people forced to leave pets behind should have planned better. Perhaps poor people should not own pets.
Or perhaps, society’s attitudes need to change. Lawmakers merely appraise animals as property. We’re pet owners, not caregivers, and obliged to leave them along with scrapbooks, check stubs and moldy carpet. But in the hearts of Katrina victims, their animals remain sentient, loving family. To flee without them crushes the heart and rends hope. The young, the elderly, the poor and the lonely become most affected by loss of pets, their only family, their only friends, their only life’s meanings.
Few pets would forsake their humans in similar dire straights. They would stay by our side, survive with us or die with us. They would protect us from looters. They never would quit our side, some even after our death. They care not if humans live in the Garden District or the Ninth Ward. We human animals create technology and bureaucracy with the means to provide escape. Yet, when our great inventions come, we abandon our devoted companions because we posses “higher” intelligence?
Hopefully, all those lost shaggy dog stories, the resolute refusing to evacuate without Fluffy, and child-pet reunions shown on network news prove to powers-that-be the intensity of the human-animal bond. Maybe during the next disaster, desperate evacuees won’t need to stuff their animal family members into garbage bags. Rather than video of authorities shooting scared strays, we watch as rescuers pull both four-footed as well as two-legged victims into transports. Instead of images of a screaming child retching as police grab his beloved puppy, we see them playing together at the kennel set up in the Red Cross shelter.
We must make the moral Katrina’s Choice. Otherwise, in future catastrophes, our most vulnerable -- the poor, the aged, the young, the sick, the infirmed, and the furry won’t have a Snowball’s chance…
UPDATE:
Only a month after Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Coast braced for for the wrath of Rita. I packed up our cars with our two dogs, two cats, parrot, my husband, his 95-year-old mother, rations, kibble, medications, computer, cell phone, important papers and drove the usually one-hour journey to our friend’s home north of Houston. The trip took more than three hours. We were lucky. Had we left a day later, we would have been stuck in the largest traffic jam in history that blocked Houston interstate highways and evacuation routes turning normally half-day drives to Dallas, Austin, San Antonio into multi-day marathons.
The mayors of Houston and Galveston along with Texas Governor Perry advised fleeing residents to bring their pets. Somehow they would find shelter for everyone. The powers-that-be vowed a repeat of Katrina’s Choice would not occur in the Lone Star state.
Hurricane Rita bypassed Houston and slammed into the Beaumont (Texas) area. Texas Gulf Coast animal welfare organizations, already strapped from the flow of Katrina flood victims, now took in more animal rescues, many from shelters in the Beaumont area which had been a staging spot for Katrina pets.
Houston Helps
Thanks to a relatively spur-of-the-moment decision by Houston Mayor Bill White and Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, the moribund Astrodome again became a wonder of the world by opening its doors to the surge of Katrina evacuees.
Nearly 25,000 Katrina survivors found a makeshift home for a couple weeks in the first domed stadium. With them came about 600 illegals, pets who snuck onto the Houston-bound buses hidden in purses, suitcase, backpacks, pockets, underwear and, yes, garbage bags. Fortunately, the Houston SPCA welcomed the hapless and homeless pets until their humans could get settled.
The HSPCA took in more than 1000 evacuated pets from individuals as well as Louisiana shelters awash in thousand of pet refugees. After Rita hit, the HSPCA re-rescued many Katrina pets who were sheltered in Beaumont (Texas) and St. Charles (Louisiana) both victims of the later storm. Many other Houston and Texas rescue organizations pitched in to lighten the load.
As with other Gulf Coast residents,the Katrina pet evacuees ended up in shelters and sanctuaries across the country. A Buddhist sangha opened up their rural retreat for Katrina animals. Many pets were airlifted in commercial and private planes to foster homes or shelters in other states.
Some Katrina rescues were not so lucky. Some ended up in squalid private “shelters” run by hoarders who could not properly care for the pets. Others became pawns in custody suits when foster families refused to return pets to original owners. A national animal rights organization received much publicity (and resulting donations) about its “heroic” efforts to rescue Katrina pets, then abandoned hundreds of caged animals in Louisiana when TV cameras left for the next breaking news story.
Some pets, flown across country, never did reunite with their families. Even today, Katrina pets are still being shuffled between shelters. Others long unclaimed have been euthanized.
The "Other" Animals
While dolphins season in the Gulf of Mexico, enjoying bow rides on the cargo ships coming into port, 16 bottle nose flippers found themselves stranded in open water when their tank at the Marine Life Oceanarium in Gulfport, Mississippi, broke in Katrina’s hurricane winds. Rescued two weeks later, they found temporary shelter in cramped hotel swimming pools until they were relocated to a captive dolphin swim exhibit in the Bahamas.
Marine Life sea lions, not indigenous species to the Gulf Coast, also washed away in Katrina’s winds. At least one was found dead in debris on a street miles away. Others were rescued from surrounding rural areas and swamps. Five sea lions from the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans were moved to Moody Gardens in Galveston (Texas) and only recently returned home. Just three of the Zoo’s 1400 animals were killed in the storm thanks in part to the facility’s high location. The Aquarium of the Americas was not as fortunate. More than 10,000 fish perished when their back-up power generator went down after four days.
Pets Transportation and Evacuation Standards Act 2006
Thank heavens the late Congressman (and Holocaust survivor) Tom Lantos (D-CA) was such a pet lover:
“Personally, I know I wouldn't have been able to leave my little white dog Masko to a fate of almost certain death. As I watched the images of the heartbreaking choices the gulf residents had to make, I was moved to find a way to prevent this from ever happening again."
Lantos and fellow lawmaker Christopher Shays (D-CT) sponsored the Pets Transportation and Evacuation Standards Acts that requires states and local government seeking FEMA funds to detail how they will accommodate pets and service animals in their disaster preparedness plans.
The operative word is “accommodate” as the law does not force officials to allow people and their pets into evacuation shelters. Currently, the Red Cross, which is chartered by the Congress, may or may not take in pets into their shelters. Some do, some refuse.
Perhaps the Pets Act helped the many of the 12,000 evacuees from the California wildfires find shelter with their animal companions in Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego or at the Del Mar racetrack for their much larger thoroughbred horses. Or, perhaps that was just in sunny Southern California where a Starbucks, a luncheon buffet, yoga classes, massage and acupuncture stations as well as many other obligatory necessaries were available at the shelter for the many rich refugees of hilltop and country estates.
Totals
Considering debris piles still line many New Orleans streets, we shouldn’t be surprised that the exact toll on area animals remains questionable. Some reports estimate as “few” as 50,000 died in the floodwaters of New Orleans. More than 6000 pets were rescued and about 500 reunited with their families after the storms.
Unfortunately, Snowball may not have been among the lucky ones. On September 5, 2005, USA Today reported that Snowball and his heartbroken guardian had been reunited, but the story later was proven in error.
The whereabouts of the fluffy little white dog, as well as thousands of his canine cousins, remain unknown.
OLA/GULF BLOGATHON--ALL TIMES PACIFIC
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