Mouton's area is filled with crates, stacks of newspapers, food and cleaning supplies. She evacuated from Central City in New Orleans the Sunday before Hurricane Katrina hit and caravanned to Lafayette for 14 hours with other people bringing their pets. She stayed with a relative the first couple days, then moved to the Cajundome. "I have five animals. It's a little much to be at somebody's house," she says.
Mouton wakes at dawn each morning to walk over to Blackham to feed her pets and walk the dogs in the yard around the coliseum. The shelter opens at 6:30 a.m., and pet owners are required to care for their animals. "These are my children," says Mouton. "I would like to be here all day long, but I need to take care of business, too."
Blackham Coliseum opened as an animal shelter on Tuesday, Aug. 30. It was set up as part of the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine's network of shelters around the state and is staffed by veterinarian Renée Poirrier's office. On Sept. 3, the American Humane Association was brought in to relieve Poirrier and her staff and manage the shelter.
Dick Green, director of the association's emergency services division, sleeps in a rig parked just inside the gates on Coliseum Boulevard, along with his team of nine rescue workers. "We respond to disasters on site where local authorities are overwhelmed," he says. He's cared for animals at more than 20 disaster sites, including the Sri Lanka tsunami and mudslides in Venezuela. "This certainly is one of the larger ones," he says.
Green says Lafayette's makeshift animal shelter is a model one. "This particular shelter setup is one of the best I've seen. Having people so close to their animals, it's made our job very easy," he says. The shelter is at about 50 percent capacity, with more than 200 animals, most of them dogs, but also cats and birds. In addition to owner involvement, Green says the shelter has worked so well because of its resources such as air conditioning, phones and Internet service, as well as its proximity to the Cajundome.
Over a 24-hour period, Green coordinated getting office furniture for the building and two laptop computers so the staff can begin cataloguing the animals. He's also arranged for security details at night; even though the shelter closes at 8 p.m., an animal was stolen the previous night.
Inside, two Animal Control officers are on site at all times. Volunteers and owners stream in and out, amid the sound of constant barking. Pets are arranged in cages and crates around the floor. Each animal receives an identification number, and a Polaroid photo is tacked up on the cinder block wall behind it. Animal families of brother and sister puppies and mothers and kittens are kept together, either in the same crate or right next to one another.
Because of Cecily Mouton's five animals, she was given her own space on the bleachers. A couple other animals are scattered around the stands. "I am so grateful they opened," she says. "Everyone has just been so gracious. I don't know that I'll be able to give back all that's been given. Right now, I'm homeless, but it's going to be OK."
Mouton brought pet supplies, like beds, bowls and food with her, but the shelter has no shortage of supplies. Paper towels are stacked inside the entrance, next to rows of Clorox bottles and other cleaning supplies. Outside, two rental trucks are overflowing with bags of dog food. "We get such an incredible response with food," says Green. "Water was a big issue but isn't anymore." Currently, the shelter is in need of extra large pens and crates. A poster board on the front door lists each day's needs, and volunteer sign-up sheets are taped to another door.
Green is focusing on taking the shelter to the next level now and preparing for the future. "We don't know how long this will go on," he says. "After Hurricane Floyd [in 1999], one of our shelters was open for six months." He doesn't think it will take that long but says they are preparing to stay open for 14 weeks. He's brought in a team from Nashville to take over, while he and his workers transfer to a shelter in Gonzales. He's also brought in a full-time vet from San Diego.
In addition to those stationed at the shelter, Green's team also includes people out in the waters in New Orleans rescuing animals. "There's going to be thousands of animals coming in from the field," he says, of which Blackham may have to absorb a few. The mandatory evacuations in New Orleans could also have a trickle-down effect on Lafayette, but Green says the shelter's structure won't change. "This shelter will always stay with that kind of setup," he says. "This shelter has a specific purpose to cohabitate owners in the dome and their dogs. I hope the rest of the country learns from them."
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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