Hurricane Katrina Rescue Diary

	September 13, 2005

Tuesday, September 13, 2005
From Debbie Hill, director of Rescues & Investigations

Today marks the end of the second week that we’ve been here and, as you probably have been seeing in the photos, we look a bit bedraggled.  The sun, wind and heat are taking their toll.  People are working hard in the hot sun.  We had a heat exhaustion episode yesterday.  Carmen, Robb and I had to sit down, douse some water on our heads, take a breather and let the nausea and lightheadedness pass.  And we’re watching for those things, too.  We’re looking out for one another.

The days are long.  The team members who are in charge of receiving animals at our trailer and transferring them up to Hattiesburg and back – they’re up at 5 a.m. every morning cleaning the trailer so they’re ready to roll.  They spend all day receiving pets, load the trailer, then make the trip up to Hattiesburg, unload - and don’t get back to camp until 1:30 in the morning.  Then they’re up again the next morning at 5 to do it all over again.

The field people are working 15-hour days.   We’re up every morning refreshed, eager to get back to the job and DETERMINED.  People are keeping up their their stamina and strength.   My new motto is “Hey, we’re burning daylight, let’s Go-Go-GO!”  The faster we can get back out on the street is important to us.  We stay out as long as daylight holds out.  We don’t ever want to come back to camp empty-handed.   We’re staying until the light is fading, getting animals on our last sweep through, and then we book it back to camp.  We’re always the last vehicles coming back to camp at night, rolling in after dark.    

Despite staying at a campsite with power, we can’t use the water in the RV because we’ve got no place to dump the gray water, so we’ve rigged up a shower at the animal shelter.  On every second or third day, we shower with the water sprayer used to clean the kennels.  We go back there after dark, stand in the outside dog runs and take our showers with the cold water hose.  You know conditions are pretty rough when we think it’s a luxury to take a shower with a sprayer in a dog run.

I just wanted you all back home to know how great these folks are doing, even though I’m working them pretty hard.  Everybody’s sticking with it because this matters to us.