In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which battered the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi in late August 2005, rescue workers of all stripes volunteered their time and expertise. Among them were numerous veterinary professionals, whose goal was to rescue and treat the countless animals abandoned as their owners fled to safety.

Here, we talk to Victoria Hampshire, VMD, Senior Regulatory Veterinarian and Reviewer at the US Food and Drug Administration in Rockville, MD about the way in which she and others contributed to the rescue and recovery efforts.

How did you first get involved in working the relief effort?

I'm a Public Health Service [PHS] veterinarian, and we have what's called the Commissioned Corps Readiness Force—and all Public Health Service officers are now required to be trained and available for deployment. The State Veterinarian for Louisiana requested assistance from the veterinary category to help with their shelters.

Is there some way that employees of private institutions can participate?

Yes—they can't participate with the PHS, because the PHS is deployed under a uniform services type deployment system—but all the disaster management teams from veterinary teaching hospitals could participate in their own veterinary emergency management response under a veterinary medical assistance team [VMAT], which is what they did. Almost every veterinary school provided a team, and multiple regional veterinary organizations sent disaster teams. Still other veterinarians basically just showed up at the door with their suitcase, and said, “I'm here for however long you need me.” So it was really very nice.

Once you were there, what did most of your work entail?

I was assigned to help oversee the situation at the Parker Coliseum in Baton Rouge. The Coliseum was managed by the Incident Commander at Louisiana State University [LSU], Dr. David Senior, who is the Chairman of Clinical Medicine LSU basically loaned out their Coliseum to use for thirty days as a shelter for animals. I reported to him, and Dr. Paula Droane, who was the representative from the local Louisiana chapter of the AVMA [American Veterinary Medical Association]. The State Veterinarian asked the PHS to divide up their contingent to support both this shelter in Baton Rouge, which was for owned animals or for animals turned over by owners, and then to also send a contingent to Gonzales, a very large horse expo center about thirty miles to the south, which was used to shelter animals that did not have apparent owners.

What skills proved most useful?

Actually, it was interesting—it was the laboratory animal husbandry oversight that was the most important. They had about 1,500 animals, and they were drawing on a support staff of volunteers that showed up at the door, and you just prayed that 300 people showed up every day! We had animals everywhere, and we needed ways to walk them and clean their cages and feed them. There were not a lot of injuries and dehydrations, as the news media would tell you. Our job was to triage the animals and make sure that they received any care that they needed. But the overwhelming majority of them simply needed husbandry care. The PHS veterinarians really rose to this challenge, because we were used to operating large facilities. You needed to get all of these cages outside and wash them, and you needed to get everybody falling into line, because volunteers, well-meaning as they are, left to their own devices will just pick a favorite animal and focus on it, and meanwhile there's sixty other animals that still need feed and water. The whole process had to be mechanized in order to get the work done in eight hours. Still, it seemed that we worked 12–14 hour days most days.

The fact that the PHS veterinarians have experience with occupational exposure and occupational health was also extremely important in terms of dealing with animal bites and animals covered in human sewage. We were able to write Standard Operating Procedures for staff to follow, and knew how to train people. Those skills were very, very important to making the whole thing a success.

What sorts of resources are available for getting involved in or training for disaster and emergency management?

Someone who wants to gain experience, and is not a part of the Public Health Service, should consider joining the local VMAT team—the AVMA usually has a list of them—and get involved that way. I think there will be a number of emerging seminars, and there will be a lot of people organizing talks this year on what was learned in the aftermath of Katrina. I think that getting experience means to try to deploy, because all the practice in the world doesn't prepare you for when it happens. The best thing to do is to try to remain flexible in terms of your professional life, so if the opportunity comes to deploy, you can.