New Orleans Attorney Lawyer

It was 10:30 hours and in this part of the city, as in many others, electricity has not yet been restored. The only light in the region dropped from a car headlamp and the only thing that had not changed in this devastated landscape of the moon.Here in the Ninth Ward, where old paper bags and empty cans blew in the middle of the road tumbleweeds in the desert, it looked as if nuclear winter was in the streets were dark and frightening, which are no signs of human habitation. In the distance: the sound of dogs écorcement.

Susan Kay - a good friend about this journalist for more than two years - had come from a comfortable home Ross, in collaboration with his son, Jeffrey and his two dogs, in response to an emergency e-mail, it were Jane Garrison, founder of AnimalRescueNewOrleans.com (Arno). There was a crisis yet, the e-mail, but it did not have a drama of the fall over a dam on the market or looters in the streets, and those most affected are not to give interviews. They were animals.

Eleven weeks after Hurricane Katrina has met the ditch, water has been long overdue. Most television crews and had to be packaged. Families evacuated - not all, but some - were straggling back from Alabama and Texas and a thousand other places that have little, that left their lives in Louisiana. But a large part of the city remained uninhabitable.

With humans, at least. Despite the many weeks of rescue efforts, thousands of dogs and cats whose owners were forced to leave, then she has remained behind the evacuation. All were roaming the streets. At the level of anything else, what had taken place in this devastated region, the plight of animals humans may be insignificant, but not that anyone has ever loved a dog or a cat.

“It was this dog on the roof of a car,” said Pia Salk, one of the founders of the Arno. “As long as I live I will never forget the sound of him screaming all night.”

In the first weeks after the storm, volunteers went from house to house search for animals whose owners believe they would be back in a few days, she had inside closed houses and apartments. Later, began volunteering animals temporary shelters, and if there is no more free places for them, they brought food in homes, in the hope that human beings, live animals, until the owner could it backwards. Sometimes, volunteers, it has received in time, sometimes not.

“At the beginning,” said Garrison, “I would walk on the street call,” puppies puppies, and it would be écorcement dogs, all around me and from the road. But as time passed, it was less, and even more dead animals. ”

No clear deaths have been made, but estimates indicate that more than 100000 animals, in the wake of Katrina. About 8500 animals were rescued and 1200 with the landlord.

The Humane Society of the United States and Louisiana’s society for the prevention of cruelty to animals have a combined $ 40 million to date. But in a lot befremdet step for animal rights, Dir LA Kathleen Blanco announced on 8 November the abolition of public policy - during the crisis - to allow Out-of-State veterinary support to offer. Blanco announcement is in line with the official position of a number of posts in New Orleans: that the crisis is past.

LASPCA has announced plans are not animal rescue operation, theorizing animals could not be placed in institutions for life after so long. And in mid November, after several days of informal assessment of the city of animal populations, LASPCA held a press conference to say that the number of animals on the road was curved rescue groups. Only animals trained rescue workers were needed, “said LASPCA Director Laura Maloney, and added that” people have worked in disasters say, it is a psychological effect, if some people have a difficult time to relax ” .

Empört workers rescue animals, was the scene for weeks, tells a different story.

“You do not see many animals during the day because they fear and traumatized, but they come at night,” said Garrison. “They are everywhere and they suffer from hunger.”

Kay, 50, is the type of animal lovers, feels the pain of the suffering of an animal on their own nerve - someone who can not in a movie or read a novel, a dog that dies. In the first days after Katrina, “she suggested as a volunteer with many groups of animal rights, but the word came back by the SPCA of Louisiana and others who, with the exception of highly skilled workers Rescue and veterinarians, volunteers were not necessary.

How many people live in places far from the scope of the hurricane, Kay, an art dealer, had studied the images of the disaster on television and in newspapers, and felt neglected and frustrated and depressed, then their inability, for a useful contribution. They checks on Katrina written by relief agencies, but none of these was the same as being there.

It was not so, it forecast that the situation of homeless people stranded or less merit, but the abandonment of animals, the authorities that their owners refusing to take off when the floods came and image their struggle to survive - - - In some cases, in fact float alongside the boats, owners of their city - Kay had nightmares since the evacuation began.