Chapter 1 - Out of the whirlwind
Bobby Alberti could hardly imagine how to say goodbye to his dog, Rover. So he didn’t.
Instead, while Rover played with another dog in a temporary shelter for hurricane evacuees in New Orleans, Alberti slipped away. He boarded a Coast Guard helicopter that would take him to an evacuation site for humans only. Later he would meet up with his sister and brother-in-law. They would take him to their home in Houston where, like tens of thousands of others, he could begin to think about how to put his life back together after losing his home to Hurricane Katrina, one of the most destructive storms ever to strike an American coastline.
Leaving Rover was easily the most difficult thing Alberti ever had to do. Alberti had adopted Rover, a black Labrador-Dalmatian mix, through a newspaper ad, and the two had been living with Alberti’s mother at her home in the Gentilly section of New Orleans. But two years ago, Alberti’s mother died. Rover was all Alberti had. And they were inseparable.
How inseparable?
When Alberti had to climb onto a rooftop on the day Katrina struck, he wouldn’t leave Rover behind. He tried his best to hoist the 80-pound Rover onto a ladder. But Alberti, who is 59 and slight in build, couldn’t do it. As the flood water raged around him, he kept a tight grip on Rover’s leash while the dog paddled alongside, exhausted. Finally, Bobby was able to help Rover clamber upon a piece of fence floating nearby.
After what seemed like a year, but was perhaps just a half hour, a Coast Guard helicopter came to the rescue. “I’m not leaving without my dog,” Alberti declared. And so the Coast Guard took them both.
But at the New Orleans shelter, there was no arguing with the authorities. They told Alberti the shelter was no longer safe and he had to go to a new site that would not accept pets. He would have to leave Rover behind with the authorities without knowing exactly how they would care for him.
So Alberti walked away from Rover with tears streaming down his cheeks. He doubted whether he would ever see his best friend again.
A month would pass – a month during which Alberti stayed with his sister and thought far more about his dog than his ruined home or when he could return to his job. Racked with guilt over having left his pet behind, Alberti was inconsolable.
As it turned out, Bobby and Rover found each other again. On October 3, the Humane Society of Missouri reunited Bobby with Rover at a tearful reunion at HSMO’s headquarters in St. Louis.
Bobby’s story is just one of thousands you can find in New Orleans and along 150 miles of shoreline in Louisiana and Mississippi. Not all of them have happy endings. But many do. Out of the whirlwind came an animal rescue effort mounted from all corners of the country.
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Within days after Hurricane Katrina struck, hundreds of well-trained rescue workers responded – including eight from the Humane Society of Missouri. Armed with catch poles, hip waders, and dry suits, they dove under buildings and climbed onto rooftops to rescue pets on the brink of starvation and traumatized from hours of swimming for their lives. The animals were later shipped to HSMO and other animal welfare organizations across the nation. Those agencies, in turn, invited families to take the pets into their homes either as foster or adoptive parents. As a result, many owners who either had to leave their pets behind or who were separated from them in the relief effort could enjoy tearful reunions days and weeks later.
The humane organizations also used the disaster as a teachable moment to shine a light on their operations and the problems stemming from pet overpopulation. Americans contributed millions of dollars to these organizations so that they could rebuild facilities, add spay and neuter programs, and promote adoptions. Animal welfare advocates also button-holed legislators and policymakers, telling them that they had to change regulations that separated victims from their pets during a rescue. Legislators have since introduced legislation on both the state and federal levels.
No one knows how many animals perished in the hurricane and its aftermath. Estimates range from as few as several thousand to more than a hundred thousand. Surely more could have been saved if the animal rescue had not been hampered by the same sort of jurisdictional and political problems that impeded the human rescue effort.
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But what most of those involved in the animal rescue effort will remember is the cadre of everyday American workers and volunteers whose enormous energy and compassion for animal life was demonstrated day after day under the most adverse conditions. They worked relentlessly, without sleep, away from their homes and families, going out early and staying out late, trying to save just one more dog or cat. They could not bear to abandon an animal.
This account focuses in particular on the efforts of four animal welfare organizations that played a critical role in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina – the Humane Society of Missouri, the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Humane Society of Southern Mississippi, and the Houston Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Together they rescued more than 10,000 animals, reunited hundreds of families with their pets, and found new homes for thousands more.
The accounts they have shared with one another have become part of Katrina lore. Stories like those of Bobby Alberti and:
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Kathy Warnick and the staff of the Missouri Humane Society. Warnick sent a corps of a dozen highly-trained animal rescue and investigation officers, a shelter manager and technicians, and a veterinarian and veterinary technicians who would save thousands of animals. Gulf Coast officials praised the group for its professionalism, patience, and skill in rescuing and caring for all manner of pets and wildlife -- Pugs and Pekinese, Persians and Siamese, horses and hogs, geese, and even a ’gator.
- Laura Maloney and the Louisiana SPCA staff members, who evacuated and saved every animal from their shelter in the Ninth Ward. Ultimately, they lost the shelter and many of their own homes when the levees broke. Soldiering on, they established on the day after the hurricane a massive animal intake facility at the Lamar-Dixon Exposition Center about 50 miles north of New Orleans. From there, thousands of animals were shipped to safe havens across the nation.
- Tara High and the Humane Society of Southern Mississippi. High took over operation of the shelter just a couple of days after Katrina struck. What she found was a flooded shelter and a decimated staff. Half had fled the area and their jobs, never to return. Today, High has her organization in brand new facilities and is saving and adopting out more animals than ever before.
- Patricia Mercer and the staff of the Houston SPCA who put out the welcome mat for the Louisiana SPCA’s shelter animals in addition to the hundreds of animals evacuated from New Orleans. Within days, they found foster and adoptive families for these pets, and within weeks reunited many with their original families.
- Dr. James Riopelle of New Orleans, an anesthesiologist, who after doing what he could to save his patients at Lindy Boggs Medical Center, remained behind in the darkened, flooded facility to care for 60 animals that otherwise would have been euthanized.
This tale begins on August 26, 2005, a day after Katrina spun from tropical storm to hurricane. Read Chapter 2 .
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