Chapter 5 - Frustration and loss
September 1-2, 2005
“Hey big guy…. How’re you doing? …. I’m not going to hurt you. You’re not going to hurt me.’’
It is Friday, September 2, five days after Hurricane Katrina struck the shores of Southern Mississippi. Kyle Held, a rescue worker from the Humane Society of Missouri, finds himself just inside the door of a single-story wood frame home about a half mile from the beach in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Two police officers had summoned Held to the home because they did not want to deal with what was inside -- a starving, snarling, obese, rat terrier. “You could count every one of his teeth,” Held would later recall.
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Ugly, but then the dog was just doing his job, protecting his owner. Unfortunately, it was too late. The owner lay dead on the floor and had probably been there several days since his house was inundated in the tidal wash spawned by the hurricane. It had taken the police all this time to reach the home and now they needed to remove the man, identify him, and notify the next of kin.
None of that could happen until Held performed his magic.
He approached the dog gingerly, carrying a catch pole in one hand and a can of spray called “Direct Stop” in another. As he whispered sweet nothings to the animal, Held was at once looking for a way to get to the dog through a maze of overturned furniture -- and a way to get out fast. The exit strategy was necessary if the dog should suddenly go on the attack or if perhaps another animal was lurking nearby.
“We’re going to make this as painless as possible for both me and you,” Held said as he approached. Then he extended his hand. The dog tried to bite him.
He had to use the catch pole, a device with a loop of cable at the end. The idea is to drape the cable over the animal’s head and tighten it around his neck while using the pole to keep the animal from moving in for an attack. In the hands of a novice, the catch pole would seem an awkward device. It would take that person several tries to lasso a fence post much less a snarling animal prone to pounce at a moment’s notice. Held knew that he would not get too many opportunities to make this work and so he made the first one count.
As he landed the loop over the terrier’s head, the dog lashed out, biting anything within range of his snout a couch, a chair, but, fortunately, no humans. Once outside and away from his dead owner, the terrier suddenly turned docile.
This was no surprise to Held, a veteran of many such captures. The dog wasn’t mean or vicious, just frightened, starving and defending his home and family. Change the environment, and animals, especially pets that had been well cared for in the past, will return to their normal behavior: friendly and loyal.
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Held felt good about the capture and the fact that soon this dog would be shipped to a staging area in Hattiesburg, 100 miles north, and within days might be at a shelter where he could be adopted by a new family.
But in the first days after the Humane Society’s eight-member team had arrived on the Gulf Coast, this rescue stood out as one of only a few that could be undertaken. As they traveled broken roads, threaded their way through fallen trees, and ducked around downed power lines, the HSMO workers ran into one bureaucratic dead end after another.
The crew had arrived in Jackson, Mississippi, late on Wednesday and rose early the following day ready to go to work under the direction of the Humane Society of the United States. The Missouri workers felt as if they had parachuted into a Third World country: power out; gasoline scarce; desperate people; dying animals. All of this percolating in the late summer sun at temperatures ranging from 90 to 100 degrees.
But Debbie Hill and the other members of the Missouri team she was leading were told to make “assessments” only. The Humane Society of the United States had yet to get permission from the state to rescue and shelter the animals at a staging area it had established at a sports center in Jackson, Mississippi.
The Missouri workers couldn’t bear to leave animals and their owners in peril. So in the early going, Hill had to assure HSUS that the Missouri staff would shelter and care for any animal they rescued. That meant housing the animals in the Missouri agency’s trailer and vans. And only so many could be rescued.
Hill barely contained her anger and frustration. But she wasn’t going to restrain her team. They headed to the Gulf Coast to do their jobs – to rescue animals.
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On that same Friday in Gulfport, workers at the Humane Society of Southern Mississippi were well into the arduous process of putting their flooded shelter back together. It was nothing less than hellish, operations director Julie Parks recalled. The storm had not only decimated the shelter, it had depleted the staff. Where once there had been 30 people to run the shelter, only nine or ten returned. A few staff members came by to see when and whether they could get their pay checks.
Paychecks? The storm had washed away the agency’s computers, its records, and its checkbook. Parks and a board member paid some of the workers in cash out of their personal funds. Once paid, some workers did not return.
At the same time, residents began arriving at the shelter with their pets or with those that they found in the aftermath of the hurricane. Could the shelter take them in for at least a few days until they could get their own situation squared away?
Those workers who stayed began to bond with one another like never before. They were going to get through this somehow, collecting water from a dripping faucet to clean the floors, soaking up flooded areas with recycled newspapers or whatever was at hand.
They were grateful when help arrived, but they chuckled too. Here came the workers from VMAT – the Veterinary Medical Assistance Team – all decked out in moon suits. And here they were in t-shirts and cutoffs.
But their arrival -- and that of other workers -- heralded better days ahead. Among the rescuers were Debbie Hill, Linda Campbell, John Anderson and Brian Thomas of the Humane Society of Missouri. They loaded 140 animals into their vans and took them back to the newly-established intake center at Jackson. The operation took all night. But the dogs and cats, many of whom had swum for their lives just days before, were now safe, clean, and secure.
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Kathleen Blanco, the governor of Louisiana, had essentially shut down New Orleans, now mostly underwater. Authorities were focused on getting everyone out. But Kathryn Destreza, the director of animal services for the Louisiana SPCA, wanted desperately to get back in. She knew thousands of animals had been left behind in homes with just a few days of food and water. She knew, too, that those evacuees who had taken their pets with them would need those pets taken care of as they tried to flee the city on foot, on buses, or whatever transportation they could find.
“Do we have permission to go into the city?” Destreza asked her boss, Laura Maloney, who had been trying to coordinate rescue efforts with local authorities.
“Not really,” Maloney responded. But Maloney was eager to get her staff back into the city. “If you get stopped,’’ she advised Destreza, “just try to talk your way through.”
So Destreza and fellow staffer Glenn Smith headed down Interstate 10 toward New Orleans wondering what they might find. It wasn’t long before they found residents walking out of the city on a day when the temperature was 92 degrees.
They pulled off the highway in Metairie at Causeway Boulevard, about five miles from downtown New Orleans, where they found thousands of people gathered on the grassy areas along the freeway. The authorities had created a staging area there where emergency and supply vehicles, as well as passenger buses, could be brought in to feed, treat, and evacuate the residents.
Destreza and Smith were outfitted in navy blue LA/SPCA t-shirts, a style much like the police use. This proved to be an advantage as authorities treated them with some deference and allowed them into areas off limits to others. But Destreza found that with residents it put her at a disadvantage. Many of the evacuees were angry and desperate and taking it out on the authorities. Some were clearly famished and dehydrated. Others, it seemed to her, had been drinking. This was like Mardi Gras to the max, she thought, but with the crowd furious rather than festive.
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Destreza waded into the throng, looking this way and that for people with pets. She found many and asked them if she could take their companions to a shelter. She promised them that they could be reunited later. Few wanted to part with their animals. Not now, not after they had come so far with them.
But they really had no other choice. The National Guard was not allowing pets on the evacuation buses. What would happen when it came time for them to board? Destreza could reason with only so many people, picking up a pet here and there, and loading them into her van.
Suddenly a hundred yards away, Destreza noticed that a portion of the crowd had started surging toward a line of buses, desperate to get aboard and to get out. Some were carrying their pets; others were pulling them behind on leashes. As she moved toward the crowd to see what she could do to help out, Destreza noticed that some of the residents had let go of dogs either accidentally or in a panic. She saw a poodle, then a pit bull get trampled.
Not long after, Dezterza got a phone call from Maloney. Come back, she said. There were reports of shootings along the evacuation route. “If you don’t go now, you might not be able to get out.”
Seeing so many animals in distress, Destreza and Smith refused to leave.
In the remaining daylight hours, Destreza and Smith managed to establish an area where they could begin to process animals. More than 40 people turned over their pets and the two drove back to the Lamar-Dixon shelter with a van full of animals. They stopped to fill the remaining seats in their van with a few human evacuees as well.
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When Jamie Manders arrived in Houston by bus with her mother on September 1, she began working the phones and the internet on behalf her husband, Dr. James Riopelle. She wrote of a man who was now alone at Lindy Boggs Medical Center with 60 cats and dogs and a couple of guinea pigs. The good doctor was at the edge of exhaustion. Could anyone help?
She called the administrators at Tenet Healthcare, the corporate owner of the medical center. We want to get your husband out, she said they told her. But you’ll have to persuade him to let us bring in a vet to euthanize the animals. They can’t be evacuated.
Impossible, Manders replied. James hadn’t stayed there all this time, passing up other opportunities to leave only to have someone kill off all those pets. She knew he wouldn’t agree. “He’s not going to do it,” she told an administrator. Then she added, “He’s got a gun. Don’t even try it.”
Manders made more calls -- one to Dateline NBC. They seemed interested, but they never got back to her. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, another television personality took an interest. Oprah wanted to help with the rescue. Read Chapter 6.
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