Owners who left their pets behind and evacuate ahead of Hurricane Gustav are criminals
Early well planned rescue operation for Hurricane Gustav, by rescuers into the predicted storm-damaged areas assures that the vast majority of pets should evacuated with their owners, and thousands of evacuees took advantage of the pet-friendly centers and transportation made available.
Animal-related disaster response teams were on hand to make sure pets would be well cared for.
Even after Katrina, the American Red Cross had loosened its “no pets” policy and began actively partnering with animal-welfare agencies throughout the country.
For Gustav, the Red Cross set up a shelter across from the Shreveport fairgrounds to provide temporary housing for pet owners.
“It’s really been such a relief to know that people were able to leave with their pets and they didn’t have to stay behind,” says Allison Cardona, ASPCA director of disaster response.
But there are pockets of large numbers of left-behind pets. In Jefferson Parish, “at least hundreds” were left tied in backyards, locked in houses or wandering the sidewalks, said Best Friends Animal Society’s animal response manager Rich Crook, who is directing several teams of rescuers.
It’s disheartening, Crook said, that so many who fled didn’t take their pets. At one house, two dogs wandered about outside, and 12 to 15 more were inside.
“Everyone who left pets behind basically gambled on their lives,” he said.
Crook’s teams are giving food and water to left-behind animals, picking up those that are wandering and transporting to safe havens those whose owners have called and asked that they do so.
Crook entered Jefferson Parish with a list of nearly two dozen addresses where pets were known to have been abandoned, and one was the home of a sweet-natured pit bull named Cam.
The dog’s owner had evacuated and left the dog in the care of a neighbor who intended to stay and tough out the storm. When the mandatory evacuation notice came, the neighbor piled her family into the car, left Cam in the yard and called Best Friends.
Cam had endured 24 hours of pelting rain and harsh winds. Though worn out and scared, Cam was grateful enough for human contact that he cheerfully put up with being picked up by Crook and pushed over the tall fence to the arms of rescuers who placed him into a van and took him to a shelter to await his so called animal lover family to return.
However a weaker-than-expected Hurricane Gustav swirled into the fishing villages and oil-and-gas towns of Louisiana’s Cajun country Monday, delivering only a glancing blow to New Orleans that did little more than send water sloshing harmlessly over its rebuilt floodwalls.
Though forecasters had feared a catastrophic Category 4 storm on the 1-to-5 scale, but Gustav weakened as it drew close to land, coming ashore with 110 mph winds. It quickly dropped to a Category 1 as it steamed inland toward Texas.
Late Monday, Gustav’s center was located about 20 miles southwest of Alexandria, lumbering northwest at about 13 mph. Forecasters expect the storm to weaken further to a tropical depression on Tuesday as it moves toward northeastern Texas. Storm surge flooding was expected to continue to subside overnight.
Source: Freep.com
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