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September 7, 2005, 9 p.m.: Americans Urged to Tell New Orleans Officials to Allow Animals to Be Evacuated
PETA has dispatched a team of seasoned flood rescue workers to Louisiana 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.
A full nine days after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast and left many thousands of animals dead and dying, it has become clear that the greater problem has turned out to be the failure of the state and federal governments to allow animal protection agents to rescue the animals, which has added enormously and unnecessarily to the original toll and caused the slow and agonizing deaths of many thousands of beloved dogs, cats, and other animals.
Worse, although the Federal Emergency Management Agency's FEMA) guidelines on animal handling in a disaster were carefully crafted years ago in cooperation with PETA and other animal organizations, our government has evidently thrown them out the window, even going so far as to order citizens to abandon their animals under threat of arrest—animals who in many cases were considered members of the family and were all that these people had left.
Late last night, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reportedly issued a mandatory evacuation order and authorized police to remove people from their homes regardless of the residents' wishes, according to CNN. Although Lt. Gen. Russel Honore—commander of the First U.S. Army and the person in charge in New Orlean—apparently stated that his military units will not carry out such evacuations, New Orleans police officers and other law enforcement agents may force city residents to abandon their animals when evacuating. America must also ask Mayor Nagin to ensure that his beleaguered constitutents are allowed to take their companion animals when they evacuate.
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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
