When Barbara Duke called the local Sheriff for help when her house flooded she did not expect that she would be forced to choose between sacrificing the lives of her animals in order to save her own and staying behind and possibly drown with them.
Unbelievably, five years after Katrina, that is exactly the choice the representatives of her Sheriff’s department gave her.
Barbara writes on the ASPCA blog: “I called the local sheriff when I got concerned about a creek that runs in front of my house cutting off access to my vehicle. When they finally arrived after about an hour or so. I was told, they could take me, but not my pets. I would not leave them, so I stayed.”
When Barbara refused to leave without her four pets – like any responsible pet parent would - Tennessee’s “finest” shrugged their shoulders and moved on. Leaving the woman and her three pets to die.
And if you think that this was an aberration, notice that no agency answered the phone while the water was rising. What were they thinking? That if they did not answer the phone people would eventually go away? Or float away?
“I was also given a number of the local Humane Society who was suppose to be assisting in the rescue of pets who's owners were going to a shelter. When I called, There was no live person monitoring the phones. All I got was a bunch of automated messages.”
“And a number of the local Animal Control. I called it, but again, all I got was an automated message with an emergency number to call. I called it and left a message.”
Barbara survived and so did her dogs. She was lucky…
This is the sad state of things in the United States five years after Katrina and four years after the President signed the Pet Emergency Transportation Standards Act (PETS Act) into law, requiring local jurisdictions to plan for and implement plans to evacuate animals with their companions.
And it is not only in Tennessee that local jurisdictions and law enforcement fail to meet the modest requirements of the PETS act. The same scenes occur whenever there is a disaster - with few, preciously few exceptions.
The PETS Act makes the Administrator of FEMA (Craig Fugate and his predecessors and their current supervisor, Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security) responsible for enforcement of the PETS Act.
FEMA has been granted sweeping powers to force local jurisdictions to comply with the law. Under the Stafford Act (which the PETS Act is part of) the Administrator of FEMA can withhold FEMA money from any jurisdiction that fails to comply. We are talking billions of tax dollars.
There is virtually no training for law enforcement, fire fighters, medics etc. that is not partly funded by FEMA dollars (directly or indirectly). Fugate’s job is so easy: deny these moneys and soon local jurisdictions will be forced to stop breaking the law.
If Fugate wanted to speed things up, he could arrange for criminal investigations to be opened up. What just happened to Barbara Duke amounts to attempted manslaughter, at least in my book.
FEMA’s failure to act, again, makes it an accessory to the criminal violations of the PETS Act that are currently being committed in Tennessee and elsewhere, and soon in a neighborhood like yours… Our tax dollar are being handed over to wasteful and irresponsible local jurisdictions whose officers act against the best interests of their citizens.
Someone should put a stop to it.
But don’t hold your breath. It is very unlikely that anyone will pay attention. After all they are only four dawgs and this woman is clearly a disturbed person.
As for me, I am with the disturbed people. This chain of events is very, very disturbing.
