It’s been 5 years since Katrina. I know this is my “business” blog, but it was a huge event and I’d like to honor that with an update on some of the good things that happened in relation to it.
Some of the most heart-filling stories come from the people that were involved in rescuing the pets that were left behind.
Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah, was the first animal rescue team on the ground.
(Best Friends Animal Sanctuary is one of the most beautiful places on earth and a group that I support. Please visit their web site and find out more about the good work they do).
Everyone that loves their pets needs to have an evacuation plan for their pets just as they would have for their other family members. Don’t let your beloved beasts get lost in the fracas of an emergency situation!
Below is a story from their site.
Click here to see the video.
You can click here to order the book (I have it, it’s beautiful).
On the Water
August 20, 2010, 8:19PM MT
By Sandy Miller, Best Friends staff writer
Profile of two Best Friends staff who were first on the ground after Hurricane Katrina, Ethan Gurney and Jeff Popowich. Their story is unique.
“Remembering Katrina” recounts, through story and image, the experiences of those who joined in the monumental effort to rescue the thousands of pets left stranded by Hurricane Katrina. This series pays tribute to the rescuers and to the animals’ extraordinary will to survive during one of America’s worst disasters.
Ethan Gurney remembers it being so quiet out there on the water.
“There wasn’t any wind. You didn’t hear any birds,” says Gurney, a Best Friends’ animal care specialist and a member of the Hurricane Katrina rescue team. “Any sound stood out. You could hear dogs inside the houses scratching on the doors.”
Gurney and Jeff Popowich, now Best Friends’ senior animal care manager, were two of the first people Best Friends sent out on the rescue mission after the category 5 hurricane slammed into the Gulf Coast back in August 2005, breaking the levees and leaving The Big Easy swimming in a large pool of murky water.
Gurney and Popowich, stationed at the Best Friends base camp in Tylertown, Mississippi, would hit the road before dawn each morning to make it to New Orleans by daybreak. There, they would launch the boat from an off ramp and go block by block looking for dogs and cats who’d been stranded in the flood.
“We’d go through the neighborhoods listening for dogs,” Popowich says. “Once we heard one, we’d go to the house and find a way to get the dogs into the boat.”
Once the boat was full, they’d take the animals back to a staging area, unload them and head back out on the water again. They’d quit at sunset, head over to the Jefferson Parish Animal Shelter, grab some food, usually an MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) or a Red Cross box lunch, then load up the dogs and cats on transport trucks and take them back to Tylertown. The days were typically 18 to 20 hours long. After a while, Popowich and Gurney began camping out in sleeping bags on the floor of the shelter which gave them a couple more hours of much-needed sleep.
