Companion Animals / 21hurricane season, transfers of this size would become common-
place as rescue organizations sought to fi nd refuge for animals left
homeless fi rst by Katrina and later by Wilma and Rita.
An August 27 press release issued by the LA/SPCA informed
the public that the animals would be brought back to New Orleans
on Tuesday, August 30, weather permitting. The statement advised
residents who planned to evacuate the city to take their companion
animals with them. It gave basic recommendations, such as mak-
ing certain that animals had identifi cation. It also cautioned: “Pets
cannot survive if left to fend for themselves or tied to a station-
ary object. Those people who choose to abandon their pets will be
charged with cruelty to animals.”^4 In retrospect, the presumptuous-
ness of this claim seems almost laughable. Flood waters destroyed
the LA/SPCA, along with twenty other animal shelters in the Gulf
Coast region. The residents who abandoned their animals num-
bered in the thousands. If any charges were to have been fi led, it is
still unclear who would stand accused.
While the LA/SPCA staff worked, the warm waters of the Gulf
Stream’s Loop Current intensifi ed the storm. Through a normally
occurring phenomenon known as the “eyewall replacement cycle,”
it doubled in size. By August 28, it had escalated to a category 5.^5
Before its landfall in Buras-Triumph, Louisiana, in Plaquemines
Parish, storm surges had already battered the area with twelve- to
fourteen-foot tides and over ten inches of rain. Katrina struck as
a category 3 storm. It then traveled over southeastern Louisiana
and into the Breton Sound, making a third and fi nal landfall near
the border of Louisiana and Mississippi. It maintained hurricane
strength well into Mississippi before dissipating while on its path
toward the Great Lakes.
On Sunday, August 28, when Katrina reached category 5 sta-
tus, Mayor C. Ray Nagin ordered the evacuation of New Orleans.
Mandatory or voluntary evacuation orders had already been issued
for much of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi. Nagin told New
Orlean eans that they were “facing a storm that most of us have
long feared.”^6 Storm surges predicted at twenty-eight feet or more
would overfl ow the city’s levees, causing major fl ooding and many