I feel compelled to respond to some posts that I have read elsewhere concerning Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, as regarding to people and their pets.
The fact is, neither I nor my wife made a choice to let our dogs die. I'd lived in New Orleans for thirty-plus years and survived many a hurricane. We didn't expect the city to be devastated. No one expected the city to be devastated. Call it naivete. Call it ignorance. Call it stupidity. Call it what you want. But we fully expected to be back in a couple of days to get our dogs.
And, frankly, we would have been if the levees had not been breached. The catastrophic flooding that occurred in New Orleans was not directly caused by rainfall. It happened because three major levees broke wide open, allowing the city (which is below sea level and resembles a bowl) to fill up with water from the lake and river.
If we'd had any inkling how bad things were going to get, we never would have left Griffin and Zoe behind. And, if we'd had any idea that the SPCA was not going to rescue them at the same time they rescued EVERY other animal in the hospital, we would have broken through the police barricades and risked sniper fire to save them. We loved those dogs more than anything in the world and will never, ever leave our animals behind in the future, no matter what the circumstances.
The fact is, neither I nor my wife made a choice to let our dogs die. I'd lived in New Orleans for thirty-plus years and survived many a hurricane. We didn't expect the city to be devastated. No one expected the city to be devastated. Call it naivete. Call it ignorance. Call it stupidity. Call it what you want. But we fully expected to be back in a couple of days to get our dogs.
And, frankly, we would have been if the levees had not been breached. The catastrophic flooding that occurred in New Orleans was not directly caused by rainfall. It happened because three major levees broke wide open, allowing the city (which is below sea level and resembles a bowl) to fill up with water from the lake and river.
If we'd had any inkling how bad things were going to get, we never would have left Griffin and Zoe behind. And, if we'd had any idea that the SPCA was not going to rescue them at the same time they rescued EVERY other animal in the hospital, we would have broken through the police barricades and risked sniper fire to save them. We loved those dogs more than anything in the world and will never, ever leave our animals behind in the future, no matter what the circumstances.
posted by Scott at 8:19 PM
2 Comments:
I feel for you. If you ever need anyone to talk to or even vent at just mail me.
We need Congress to take immediate action and order the full support of federal responders and relief workers to save animals. We also need Congress to make sure this never, ever happens again, by passing the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act (PETS Act, H.R. 3858), which was just introduced this week. Please sign this new petition today!
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/256230705?z00m=49821&z00m=49821
We can't depend on the ASPCA, or HSUS or any of the others. It's a crap shoot, these are volunteers, and though they may mean well alot of grant money and donations come from hanging a big banner up and running disaster ops like these.
The worst thing is that Cuba, for God's sake, is able to evacuate animals and veterinarians before hurricanes, in an orderly manner. Why can't the U.S. do it? The only answer is change in legislation that all animals be allowed to come along. It makes no sense why pit bulls would be left behind since no animals were running loose, all were in cages. I know there were attempts to steal pit bulls almost daily out of the HSUS facility, the national guard had to people out of there who were transmitting pictures of pit bulls on cell phones. The fact is that all these people are volunteering down there and these animal orgs are notoriously disorganized. What activists are doing now is trying to get legislation passed so that these animals do not die in vain. One thing I am particularly concerned about is the banning of property owners from areas for longer than several days. There has not been any legislation proposed to counter this, but I don't feel that it is fair, and I don't see how it is legal, especially considering that business owners were apparently let back into New Orleans to retreive their property. There must be such a thing as a legal waiver that people can sign to take full responsibility for what happens and promise not to sue. I am very disturbed by these law enforcement people banning people from their property just because of sanitation issues (no power or sewer). The only thing that I can see that helps in cases like yours would have been to try to get the media involved. When faced with being criticized on camera these groups relent sometimes because since they rely so much on the private sector so bad publicity hurts their bottom line.
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