When pets are flood victims

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — As floodwaters began to rise this spring, forcing thousands from their homes, Sgt. Kent Choate oversaw one of the larger evacuation efforts, providing shelter to hundreds of animals whose owners had been displaced.

"We expected we'd house our animals and maybe 100 more lost animals, but then one of the city's pumps broke, and we knew it was going to grow exponentially," said Choate, who is in charge of the animal-control unit of city's Police Department. "We just didn't know how big."

Almost every spring, water from the nearby Cedar River flooded the approach to the building that housed the animal shelter. But this spring was different. Heavy rains left surrounding farmland saturated, and by early June the engorged Cedar River, normally a lazy stretch of water that feeds the Mississippi, washed over its banks, flooding an estimated 4,200 homes here and displacing thousands.

As the shelter flooded, animal-control officers were forced to relocate to higher ground at nearby Kirkwood Community College, where professor Anne Duffy had previously offered the school's Animal Health Technology building as a temporary shelter.

"We both agreed after the May flooding that we should put a policy together," Duffy said. "We were going to get right on that, but then the flood came up before the policy did."

As the situation deteriorated, flood victims, many staying in hotels, shelters or even cars, began dropping off their pets at the college. Others, who had been forced to flee without their pets, began calling in pleading for their animals to be rescued. Within days, what had started as a makeshift shelter had grown into a sprawling operation housing nearly 1,000 displaced animals — dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, lizards, a red-eared slider turtle — in three buildings.

With the influx of animals came an infusion of aid. Several national chain stores donated supplies. Veterinary technicians came from as far away as California to volunteer, and legions of veterinarians, groomers and even flood victims soon arrived at the shelter wanting to help.

Over the weekend, 40-pound bags of dog food were stacked pell-mell throughout the complex, pet toys were crammed into boxes and shredded paper and kitty litter had been pushed into corners of classrooms. Duffy estimated volunteers had logged 25,000 hours.

One of the lessons driven home after Hurricane Katrina — in which an estimated 200,000 animals were displaced — was that some residents risked, and lost, their lives rather than leave a beloved pet behind.

"The biggest thing learned by everyone from Katrina is the importance of animals in people's lives," said Diane Webber, disaster-preparedness director for the Humane Society of the United States. "They can't be excluded from disaster planning and response. People aren't going to function and they're not going to evacuate if their animals aren't provided for."

The dedication of Americans to their pets is well documented, including a Zogby International poll in 2006 in which almost half of adults reported they would refuse to evacuate if they could not take their pets.

Joanna Hughes, 45, said her husband, Philip, had lived with their six dogs in a garage for several days after they evacuated their home in nearby Palo.

"My husband would've stayed there right with the dogs until they hauled him away in shackles," said Hughes, who visited her dogs at the Kirkwood shelter this past weekend. "He cares more about the pets than he ever did about the house."

Still, many animals were either abandoned or forgotten as the floodwaters approached.

One of the dogs at the shelter, an unidentified white German shepherd, was rescued by searchers who were answering a call to rescue another animal.

"She was swimming back and forth in 5 feet of water when they pulled her out of the house," Duffy said. "She was just swimming from the back of the house to the front of the house."

Duffy added that although the German shepherd showed signs of having recently given birth, rescuers did not find her litter.

As the waters have receded, the shelter's population has dropped to 620.

The city of Cedar Rapids has imposed a 14-day hold on all pet adoptions.