Animals in Research Facilities / 89A.M., twenty-two feet of water submerged the basement and ground
level. When the recovery operations began on Monday, June 11,
over ten million gallons of water had to be pumped out of the base-
ment of the facility. Seventy-eight primates, thirty-fi ve dogs, three
hundred rabbits, and thousands of mice died, bringing the total
number of animal deaths to approximately fi ve thousand. The facil-
ity was considered a total loss. The early warning system could not
predict a fi ve-hundred-year fl ood event and, according to Bradford
Goodwin, executive director of the animal care center, the “disas-
ter plan was extensive but worthless,” because the fl ood prevented
staff from reaching the facility. He explained:
Our disaster plan had extremely detailed plans as to where
each animal was to be moved in the event of a hurricane
or fl ood, etc. Each animal room was matched with another
room on an upper fl oor of the Medical School. This plan
was based on advance knowledge of an impending storm
using the assumption that a few hours would be available to
move the animals. In this case, there was no adequate warn-
ing and when the fl ood waters fi lled the facilities, personnel
were confi ned to their homes.^9A similar “we never expected this” attitude appeared during
Hurricane Katrina. Whereas Houston is fl ood-prone, New Orleans
sits below sea level. The “big one” was just a matter of time. Yet,
when the LSU’s Health Sciences Center in downtown New Orleans
fl ooded, it took everyone by surprise. One LSU offi cial said that the
water “came up so quickly that the human beings who were the
caretakers for [the] animals were ordered to leave immediately.”^10
None of the eight thousand mice, rats, dogs and monkeys who
remained in the labs survived.
When reports of the loss of animal lives in laboratories appeared
in the media after Tropical Storm Allison, they typically did so in
the context of lost “research.” For example, the Houston Chronicle
reported, “Lab Animals Drown; Medical Research Lost.”^11 Few rec-
ognize the loss of animal lives, and most make the animals invisible.