Animal-Rescue Plans Devised for Disasters

When tornadoes suck houses off foundations or floods wash barns away or earthquakes splinter bedrooms, family pets and farm animals are often forced to fend for themselves.

People in the path of disaster have all they can do to save themselves; animals end up stranded on rooftops, penned inside threatened buildings or running and swimming for their lives.

Increasingly, states are drawing up disaster plans for animals as well as humans, among them California, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts and Oklahoma.

Last September in North Carolina, floods caused by Hurricane Floyd killed 2.1 million chickens and an estimated 800,000 pets and livestock, including more than 21,000 hogs. Animal advocates vowed then the state would do better the next time.

Today, even as the height of Atlantic hurricane season approaches, not all plans are nailed down, the advocacy groups say. But with the State Animal Response Team, set up in January, “we’re in much better shape than at this time last year,” said Dr. Fred Kirkland, a state veterinarian and SART’s chief of operations.

In New Mexico, Kate Rindy had no disaster plan on Sunday, May 7, when she first noticed the smoke of the Los Alamos wildfire. Set to burn away brush on federal land, it had roared out of control and eventually charred 48,000 acres and burned 405 families out of their homes.

“That was my moment of realizing how serious it was,” said Rindy, executive director of the Santa Fe Animal Shelter and Humane Society, 25 miles from the fire. She called through the night to find foster homes for the shelter’s 60 animals to make room for pets lost in the evacuation. Eventually the Santa Fe shelter made arrangements for more than 700 animals, including rabbits, snakes, iguanas, guinea pigs and hamsters as well as the usual dogs and cats.

Rindy is now among the New Mexicans working on state and local strategies to care for animals in future disasters. For her, such a plan will mean a list of names and phone numbers of people who can react immediately.

“The essence of this was heart,” she said. “We figured this out as it happened and as we could. And the essence was people wanting to help and being able to work together.”

Volunteers risked their lives in Hurricane Floyd to reach flooded houses and break through windows and doors to reach hungry, frightened pets. North Carolina farmers made heroic efforts to save swine, cattle and horses. Officials initially thought 100,000 hogs had died; the eventual toll was 21,474.

The difference was the largely overlooked effort of farmers, said Dr. Tom McGinn, assistant state veterinarian. They “rescued that 80,000 and a heckuva lot more,” he said.

A field hospital set up here at North Carolina State University rescued about 450 small animals, mainly dogs, then photographed, washed and vaccinated them. More than 700 received the same care at East Carolina University in Greenville. Untold hundreds were helped by other volunteer groups.

But the rescue efforts were wildly uneven, with plentiful rescuers in some places and almost none in others. Some rescuers saved pets but left no notes behind about where they’d been taken; some animals ended up at shelters hours from home. So many livestock perished that giant incinerators were set up to burn the carcasses.

“There’s little to no relationship between what you saw last year and what you see today,” said Dr. Jim Hamilton, a SART volunteer and horse veterinarian in the town of Southern Pines. “The development of SART is one of the tremendously positive things that occurred as a result of the flood. This state will never be the same, from a good standpoint.”

Among the additions to the disaster arsenal are the mobile surgery unit of N.C. State’s veterinary college and an equine ambulance from Southern Pines.

SART is helping all 100 counties set up local animal response teams; about 10 are ready.

Although North Carolina is better prepared to care for animals when disaster strikes again, gaps remain. It is advising counties on the best kinds of places to shelter animals--stadiums, warehouses, fairgrounds--but no one has yet compiled a list of specific sites.

“The thing about these disasters is that the disaster is not the entire problem,” said Dr. Kelli Ferris, a veterinarian at N.C. State. “They can exacerbate problems that already exist.”

Irresponsible pet owners, for example, are more likely to abandon pets in an evacuation, she said.

SART has proposed that evacuation orders insist pet owners take their animals with them. “The major part of the responsibility falls on them to make arrangements to evacuate with their animals,” Kirkland said.

SART is also urging boarding kennels and farms to buy backup generators and make plans to get people in to work when an emergency hits--like last winter’s 20-inch snowstorm.

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On the Web:

https://www.ncagr.com/paffairs/sart/sart.htm