Home > Out of the Cage! > Winter 2007 > Louisiana SPCA Rebuilds: The Silver Lining Left by Katrina

Louisiana SPCA Rebuilds: The Silver Lining Left by Katrina

This article is based upon an in-depth interview with Laura Maloney, Chief Executive Officer of the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (LA/SPCA). When Laura recently spoke with Out of the Cage! about her experiences during and after Hurricane Katrina brought devastation to her home town of New Orleans in late August of 2004, she described with sobering candor the crisis that began to unfold even before Katrina made landfall. She recalls every detail of the harrowing evacuation of the SPCA shelter in New Orleans, the transport of more than 260 dogs and cats to Houston, and the creation of the temporary Lamar-Dixon animal shelter, through which eventually 8,500 animals would pass on their difficult journeys home.

In the wake of the disaster, Laura and thousands of other valiant rescuers toiled doggedly to bring relief to thousands of injured and stranded animals and the people who loved them. And from the rubble, they have begun to build a new future for Louisiana's homeless animals.

Even before Katrina reached the Gulf Coast, it was clear that this was not a routine storm. Laura and her colleagues knew they had to get the animals in their care to safety, and quickly. "I don't think any of us could grasp the total devastation that resulted from Katrina or even truly imagine the animal crisis it unfolded into, but our thought was initially to prepare and evacuate our shelter animals out of harm's way," she said. "Before Katrina even made landfall, we immediately went into our disaster preparation. The storm hit Monday, but our story really began that Friday."

Evacuation

"After a long day of our first New Orleans animal welfare coalition meeting, I called the shelter at 5:00 p.m. It appeared that Katrina's path had changed and a New Orleans hit was a possibility. I called Kathryn [Destreza], my Director of Animal Services at the time. That night we made the decision to implement our trigger point plan. What that meant is that we would evacuate all of our shelter animals to a pre-determined location outside of the strike zone. In this case, however, we didn't have time to send strays to one location, owned animals to another, and adoptables to yet another. This time, they all would go to Houston.

"We called our friends at the Houston SPCA, who happened to be in the middle of their annual telethon. They agreed to welcome us nonetheless. It would be our second evacuation that year — just a few months earlier, we evacuated for Hurricane Dennis, which turned out to be a non-event.

"Evacuating the shelter is an intensive process with a very detailed and laid out step-by-step process on exactly what must be done and by whom. We had done it so many times before that there wasn't a sense of panic, but just a sense of this is what we have to do and let's get it done as quickly and efficiently as possible. On Saturday morning, many of our staff and volunteers were at the shelter photographing all the animals; vaccinating all those that still needed to be vaccinated; providing health records for each; and making triplicate copies of the animals' paperwork. Meanwhile, Kathryn dispatched a team to Baton Rouge to pick up rented climate-controlled box trucks for transporting animals while staff was placing hundreds of sand bags around the shelter in hopes of holding off the floodwater that soon would arrive."

As with past weather events, the SPCA issued media advisories and alerts to the public urging them to evacuate with their animals. "We advised them to not leave animals behind," Laura explains. "You never know if the threatening storm is going to be the 'big one.'" But unlike previous storms, Laura and her colleagues sensed that Katrina was going to be a serious storm, and that message was echoed in their media releases.

"Once all the paperwork was done and the animals were ready, staff and volunteers loaded them onto the trucks. (It works like an assembly line – a well-oiled process that's implemented with precision.) By Saturday night, we were on the road with 263 animals headed to the Houston SPCA."

At the end of the six-hour drive, the animals were unloaded from the trucks at the Houston SPCA. Stunned, and in some cases unable to reach family members, Laura and her staff immediately returned to New Orleans to begin rescuing animals in the storm's path. By Monday morning, their shelter was under water and could not be used as a rescue facility as it had been in past emergencies. "We immediately started making calls to get supplies together and find a base where we could set up a temporary shelter," Laura recounts. "Kathryn and I headed out first and met state officials in Baton Rouge. We decided to set up camp at Lamar-Dixon Expo Center, which was a horse show facility."

That same day, Laura got a call from the ASPCA's Laura Lanza, Southern Regional Manager, asking how they could help. "New Yorkers should be proud to know that their animal advocates were the first to reach out to us and offer whatever assistance we needed," Laura says. "Laura Lanza was a savior…and the ASPCA continues to be an angel in our recovery efforts."

Rescue

When they arrived at Lamar-Dixon, it was empty except for the human shelter and the military and police who were making their way to the site. The LA/SPCA set up a temporary shelter with the supplies they had available. Laura bought and personally installed a wireless router to provide Internet access so that residents could contact them from wherever they landed. Initially, the military allowed the team to use the meeting rooms to organize, but they eventually were moved out as the military ramped up. Cell phones weren't working and the Lamar phone lines were buzzing once people realized they were there. While calls poured in, the LA/SPCA team met busses on the Interstate where hundreds of people and pets were huddled.

"One of the first days, I remember Kathryn radioing me from the road to say she was bringing people as well as animals back to Lamar," recalls Laura. "She found them wandering with no place to go, but they weren't leaving their pets. They came back in her truck, stayed at Lamar, and worked."

By now, recognizing that the rescue effort would require far more resources than were available locally, Laura contacted her partners across the country for help. Over the next few days, dozens of animal welfare agencies joined the effort. And within a few weeks, thousands of volunteers would arrive to help. Laura and her staff were overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from across the country.

Within days the SPCA had more than 7,000 addresses on its rescue list — all animals that needed to be saved, most by volunteers going door-to-door throughout the flood-ravaged neighborhoods. At this point Laura asked the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) to step in and assume responsibility for Lamar-Dixon. "I knew they had a disaster division and figured they'd be able to organize the operation since we had limited staff and had never handled a storm of this size," she explains.

But Laura and her team remained central to the rescue effort. "We were sleeping only three hours a night, if that, but had the feeling that we couldn't afford to sleep. All you could think about were the animals. The clock was ticking and it was a matter of life and death."

Laura vividly recalls the stresses she and her staff encountered during those horrible days. "The situation that our front line staff was walking into was incomprehensible — seeing images they'll never forget, and dealing with their own losses. The only way we could stay focused and survive under those circumstances was just to focus on the task at hand without really absorbing the horror that was unfolding in our city." She recalls that her staff was largely silent about their own personal losses even thought most of them lost everything they owned. Some, in fact, didn't even know the whereabouts of their parents or children.

Ana Zorrilla, who joined the LA/SPCA as Director of Development in February 2007, describes reading the notebooks of one of the staff members who recorded the rescue efforts. "It was mind boggling just looking at the notebooks covering everything from media calls from around the world, to calls from people offering to help and volunteer, and, of course, the calls for help. It was sad and heartbreaking and incredible to observe the handwriting, and how it changed and evolved day-to-day. It was like looking into a unique window of time, and I remember thinking that the handwriting seemed to reflect the stress and unbelievable circumstances that everyone was under."

As for the shelter itself, Laura describes it in a word — chaos. But within that chaos, she says, 8,500 animals were saved. "It was the combined efforts of colleagues from all across the country, volunteers and a country coming together to help."

The temporary shelter was the largest animal shelter ever created, and it came together with astonishing speed. As Laura describes, they truly created a shelter out of thin air. "I think the biggest thing to understand about Lamar-Dixon is that it was more than just a base for rescue operations. It was an animal shelter, and anyone in the shelter business knows that running and operating a shelter involves a highly complex set of skills, coordination, and management to care for the animals. In a normal scenario it's both challenging and emotional. Imagine doing so in a temporary, makeshift camp with hundreds of animals coming in every day under the surreal, heart-wrenching backdrop of Hurricane Katrina. And it wasn't just dogs and cats. There were horses, birds, snakes, pigs, goats, rabbits, ferrets — any animal companion you can imagine.

"We wish that we could have saved them all, but sadly, that wasn't possible," Laura says. But she finds some measured peace when she receives a letter — even a year-and-a-half later — from someone thanking them for saving their pet. For example, recently Laura received a letter and framed drawing from a resident whose parrot, Mango, was rescued from their home in Lakeview, one of the most devastated parts of the city. The family had not been permitted to bring Mango to the hotel to which they were evacuated. So they left plenty of food and water, believing as many people did that they would be able to return home within a few days. Mango was one of the rescued birds housed at Lamar-Dixon, and the family ultimately located her in the home where she was being fostered.

Laura also remembers a face-to-face thank you from a woman whose dog didn't survive the storm; rescuers were not able to reach him in time. "She actually came out to Lamar-Dixon to thank us for responding to her calls and making the effort. She stayed for several days to volunteer."

Rebuilding

A year-and-a-half after Katrina, its silver lining is finally coming into view.

The LA/SPCA is building an all-new state-of-the-art shelter campus that incorporates the best practices in shelter construction. The facility will be completed in three distinct stages, beginning with an Animal Rescue & Care Center. It will incorporate the basic functions of animal sheltering, providing a space for animal control services, stray animal collection, and cruelty investigations. The building also will house the Adoption Center until the second phase of the project is completed.

Phase II construction will feature an Education & Adoption Center that will provide the public with an attractive gallery to meet and greet new adoptable animals where lifelong matches will be formed. Educational displays throughout the Center will celebrate the human/animal bond, engage young people, and encourage them to develop their understanding of the needs of companion animals. Residents will be able to enjoy a variety of workshops, such as grooming and pet massage, while children participate in highly sought-after summer camp programs. "It also will house our low-cost public veterinary clinic, which is greatly missed in the community," says Laura.

The third phase of the project will focus on bringing the community and animals together through events, such as competitive agility trials and programs for at-risk children and their dogs. "New Orleans, like a lot of urban landscapes, has young people whose only idea of sport with a dog is dog fighting," Laura explains sadly. "Being able to not only educate them about why this is cruel but also to show them a healthy alternative like dog agility training is something that appeals to me greatly. I'm an educator at heart; engaging young people rather than simply lecturing to them is really the best way to reach them and make a difference in their lives."

This third phase building also will become the home for the LA/SPCA's popular obedience programs. It is expected that the center will offer "free time" for people who want to work with their dogs on agility courses. "We want not only to be in the community, but to be a part of the community, so we're also developing ideas for community gardens and even pet-friendly housing lots," Laura explains excitedly. The campus' 10.7 acres will provide ample space "to do amazing things for the animal and people community in our region."

"I'm excited about every aspect of the project," says Laura, "from the big vision of it being a fully phased concept in animal sheltering embracing both a shelter for animals, an educational facility for the public, and a way of improving our community's quality of life — all the way down to the nuts and bolts. For example, 100 percent of the air will turn over (new fresh air from outside and old air expelled) several times per hour, and each animal will have its own mini-ventilation system to further improve air-quality and reduce the spread of disease. At our former 50-plus-year-old shelter in the 9th Ward, air never turned over!"

While the vision for the new LA/SPCA campus is dazzling, and the project is well underway, the challenges of rebuilding for the future remain clear. "I've often said that what we're doing — having to build a new shelter, operating out of a temporary shelter, rebuilding a staff, serving a community still dealing with loss even as we deal with our own loss, rescuing and sheltering the hundreds of animals that enter our shelter each month — is like changing the engine of a car while the car is rolling down the highway at 100 mph," explains Laura. "Our challenge is to not only rebuild, but to continue to operate at the highest standard, raise the bar, and make improvements that serve our animal community in not only the short term but the long term."

Not surprisingly, funding the project presents significant challenges. In a community with dire funding needs in so many areas — rebuilding schools, churches, hospitals, and yes, an animal shelter — there simply are more needs than there are resources to meet them. Moreover, the storm's devastation included wiping out the LA/SPCA's local donor base. And while the generosity and outpouring of support from across the country has been extraordinarily helpful, Laura says that the organization's long term survival must come directly from the community. She reminds us that "those thousands of local donations are vital to any non-profit."

A Vision for the Future

Laura says she doesn't expect New Orleans to stabilize for at least ten years. And while a new shelter is rising on the horizon, there are many more issues to be addressed and challenges to meet head-on. Laura explains:

"The LA/SPCA is more than an animal shelter. We work on advocacy and legislative issues, offer education programs to a variety of audiences, provide veterinary services to indigent animals, and help strengthen the human-animal bond through a variety of programs. While many of our goals have long-term impact, the next three to five years will involve rebuilding, launching education initiatives, and making an impact legislatively.

"For the animals of Louisiana I desperately want to see a reduction in animal overpopulation. We need to change the cultural mindset about spaying and neutering. I want to see a more informed and compassionate public so that cruelty and neglect is minimized. I'd like to see the end of blood sports. We're one of two states where cockfighting is legal, although New Mexico looks like it may win the battle in the next few months. I think this is our year to phase out cockfighting, but we know the sport will continue underground as it does throughout the U.S. Education and fostering a respectful community is key to our success.

"I want to see us moving a community's mindset in that direction and thinking of the big picture and how violence against animals is interconnected with violence against people; how an unwanted litter is not a small problem but a problem that contributes to shelters having to euthanize unwanted animals. We've been expanding our animal enforcement and cruelty investigations to a statewide level and I hope that in the next five years many of our smaller municipalities will be moving toward an improved animal ethic with better laws and a better understanding of sheltering and caring for animals. I think we can have a strong impact in those areas. I also want to see a criminal justice system that imposes appropriate sentences in animal cruelty and neglect cases, and I think we can see an improvement in that in the next five years."

In the legal arena, positive change is happening in Louisiana. The state recently enacted into law a new animal disaster bill that provides for the welfare of Louisiana's animals in the event of future disasters. The bill was successfully passed thanks to the collaborative efforts of Senator Fontenot, lobbyist Charles Smith, the ASPCA's Stacy Wolf, Laura, and a strong pet-loving community.

"One of the things I've learned since I've been in the animal sheltering world these past six years is that the victories that impact the whole are truly long term," says Laura. "It takes many steps to get to where we need to be."

Laura Maloney and the LA/SPCA clearly are stepping in the right direction.

The Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (LA/SPCA) is an organization devoted to improving the lives of animals and eliminating the homelessness, neglect, and abuse that signal animal suffering. Chartered in 1888, our history has been paved with an understanding that only through an improved human-animal ethic can we better the lives of companion animals and that of our community. Our programs and services are infused with the highest standards of care and compassion.

On May 24, 2007, Laura Maloney will appear on a panel discussion at the NYC Bar Association to discuss the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the task of re-homing the animals left alone after the disaster.

For more information about LA/SPCA or to find out how you can support its vital mission, visit www.la-spca.org.