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Lafourche Parish Government officials have partnered with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to save the animals of the parish in the event of a disaster.
The ASPCA will assist in evacuating the Lafourche Parish Animal Shelter as well as rescuing stranded animals after such an event.
The national organization would provide their resources, expertise and manpower at no cost to the parish, which includes a rolling veterinary hospital, mobile command center and an army of specially trained personnel.
“Their purpose, of course, just like ours, is maximizing the life and welfare of the animals in the case of a major event,” said Reggie Bagala, director of community services for Lafourche Parish.
Bagala said the ASPCA has more resources than Lafourche Parish to save animal lives, so it frees up parish and state resources and manpower to focus on saving human lives.
In the event of a direct hit from a hurricane, the ASPCA can dispatch a number of 53-foot semi-trucks, each outfitted for a special purpose, said Dick Green, ASPCA senior director of disaster response.
The ASPCA has a two-story, 30,000 square-foot warehouse filled with trailers in Missouri. One type of trailer is a self-sustained sleeper that can house 16 specialists. Another has a fully-equipped animal surgical hospital.
The organization also has communication trailers for coordinating their rescue operations and contacting other first-responder agencies.
There are also a slew of boats for water rescues, Green said.
“That warehouse is strategically located because we can get just about anywhere in the country in a fairly short amount of time,” he said.
Green said the ASPCA will typically dispatch nine of these trailers to a disaster area and it could be in Louisiana in 12 hours.
They are also prepared to deploy and stay in the disaster area for up to a week without resupply.
“We come with a lot of stuff,” he said.
The ASPCA would rescue all animals: house pets, strays and backyard livestock, Green said.
Green said the Louisiana Department of Agriculture is in charge of rescuing livestock from farms.
The ASPCA, along with first responders and various animal rescue groups, recently conducted an eight-day disaster training exercise in Gonzales, La. Two or three such training exercises are held every year, according to Green.
The ASPCA would assist Lafourche in re-establishing the parish animal shelter and stay until they are no longer needed. The group stayed in New Orleans for 47 days after Hurricane Katrina, and spent months along the Gulf Coast after the BP Oil Spill, he said.
Green said the ASPCA is far better prepared for a disaster than it was in 2005. “During Katrina we had very little resources,” he said. But the organization took the lessons learned and applied them to their future role in responding to large-scale disasters.
The ASPCA rescued stranded animals during the Mississippi River Flood of 2011 in both St. John the Baptist and Plaquemines parishes and helped shelter them.
“We have a phenomenal resource that we didn’t have before,” said Lafourche Parish Councilman Phillip Gouaux.
