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September 7, 2005, 9 a.m.: PETA’s Rescue Team Dispatched; Rue McClanahan Asks for Compassion for Katrina’s Animal Victims
PETA has dispatched a team of seasoned flood rescue workers to New Orleans in vans stocked with rescue supplies and food and towing a boat, which will aid them and others in reaching stranded animals. As their time and access to communications equipment allows, we will post their updates from the scene here.We have put out an emergency request to individuals here in Hampton Roads, one of America's boating capitals, to donate the use of their boats for animal rescue efforts in Louisiana. That is, in fact, one of the most important things needed there right now.
On September 6, Rue McClanahan appeared on national television to publicize this awful aspect of the disaster. We continue to work with media all over the country to cover this so that the plights of animals and those who love them are not forgotten in times of disaster.
We are working hard to ensure that all investigations of Katrina relief efforts address, in concrete detail, how animals must be included in future emergency relief efforts so that families and individuals will not be forced to surrender their animals without a plan for how best to reunite with them afterward.
We spent much of September 6 contacting congressional representatives and urging them to put pressure on FEMA and Homeland Security to help rescue animals, not to bully those who have lost everything. Among the arguments we are hearing: "There isn't enough room for the animals on the boats and in the helicopters." Our response: "Well, then, get some of the reporters out of the boats and helicopters!"
We are fielding hundreds of calls, the volume of which appears to be increasing every day, from people who were away from their homes when the hurricane struck or who left thinking that they'd only be gone for two days and who have not been able to get back home. As we deal with the daily flood of "normal" emergency calls about animals in dire need of help around the nation, we are also taking addresses and descriptions of animals left in Katrina's wake and working to coordinate with rescue crews in affected areas to get the animals out safely. And we're linking those who offer help, like members of a search-and-rescue diving team in New Orleans, with those who need help. The diving team has already managed to rescue a dear greyhound with cuts and mouth wounds.
We are also offering housing—and not just the soft dog-crate beds we've already sent to New Orleans. We are opening a house here in a quiet neighborhood of our hometown of Norfolk, Virginia, for the use of elderly poor who have animals and nowhere else to go. We are hoping that this will be a godsend for some of those most in need.
Katrina will not be the last storm. While it has been comforting to know that the emergency preparedness announcements that we ran on the radio and television and the newspaper stories that we placed before the storm hit meant that hundreds, if not thousands, of animals made it out alive—because people saw and listened to what we said about not leaving their animals behind when they evacuated—we must do even more.
As our president, Ingrid E. Newkirk, wrote to supporters on September 7, "Now, we must do everything possible to ensure that those still suffering are helped and, just as important, ensure that all future official disaster relief plans include evacuating animals with their human companions as quickly and humanely as possible."
Please support our Animal Emergency Fund with as generous a donation as you can afford and help fund the timely distribution of our disaster preparedness public service announcements, provide financial and logistical support for individuals and local agencies at ground zero who are helping animals, fund our rescue efforts in Louisiana, and help us do whatever else is possible to get animals out of harm's way when disaster strikes.
You can improve the lives of dogs and cats suffering from cruelty and neglect.
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PETA's House Government Reform Committee Testimony
Heroes of the Storm
Stars Urge Officials to Take Action to Protect Animals in Disasters in PETA Ad
Read the Latest News From the Gulf Coast
Listen to PETA's Reports From New Orleans
Watch Footage of PETA's Life-Saving Work
See Pictures of PETA's Rescue Work
