World Animal Protection - Animals in Disasters Blog

On the Ground in Haiti: ARCH's Vet Team in Action

This is the second in a series of blogs contributed by Lindsay Fyffe, WSPA's Disaster Response Manager.

Arriving in Haiti is not unlike arriving into any other bustling city - a hive of activity with people going about their everyday business. It’s hot and loud with a menagerie of sights that are fascinating. Gerardo and Franco met me in the busy crowd of people waiting for other passengers to come through immigration at the airport. Then, we set off to a community on the outskirts of Port au Prince, where the ARCH vet team was working.

It took hours to get through all the traffic (I don’t even know how the UN tanks could fit along some of those streets!) And, although I had heard about and seen pictures of the temporary camps established along the road, nothing quite prepares you for the sea of tents and the “crammed in” feeling you get just by looking at them. 

Once we arrived at the site, the team was already working on a number of animals - namely goats and pigs. Owners trailed around the corner, waiting to get their pets vaccinated...along with a whole load of people (mostly little children) lining up to catch a glimpse of the ARCH vets in action. It was truly an amazing site to see! 

There was a very funny moment when I turned around and saw a little boy carrying his goat over to the team. The goat was more than half the size of the little boy and, yet, he was able to bring the animal all the way over to the treatment area by himself. Apparently, he did not want the goat to run away from getting his vaccinations!

It’s hard to believe that tomorrow is the last day that the clinic will be operating under ARCH. We plan to hold a ceremony for the team to congratulate them on all their hard work and dedication to the recovery of Haitian animals and their communities. More to come soon!

WSPA provides veterinary care and emergency feed in Thailand

Manoon Nhun-thong, Nop-Phitum district

Since writing the last blog we’ve had an update from our team on the ground in Thailand, who have been working non-stop to provide help for animals affected by the recent floods. In many areas, grassland is still underwater 5 weeks since the floods began and this has meant that owners have had to track down and buy dwindling stocks of feed just to keep their precious cattle alive. The WSPA team is providing a lifeline for 1,600 cattle in the Pak Panang district, focusing on 2 villages which have suffered the worst of the floods. Here the rice fields and grazing have been totally destroyed, but it is estimated that within two weeks the soil will have dried out and the grass will have begun to grow. So to give the fields a chance to recover, WSPA will provide emergency feed for the cattle until they can go back to grazing and in Thailand one of the most readily available foodstuffs is pineapple silage, made from fruit husks!

While the animals are being fed with these emergency rations, the WSPA team has arranged for our Veterinary Emergency Response Unit (VERU) in Thailand to co-ordinate a mobile veterinary clinic. This will provide some simple but effective veterinary care such as de-worming to 1,500 cattle as well as some health and husbandry promotion to cattle owners like Manoon Nhun-thong. This farmer is completely dependent on his cattle, and so was devastated when three of his eleven cows were lost in the floods. Although the others survived, the floods swept away the bridge connecting his village to the outside world. While the villagers survived on food dropped by helicopter, their cattle began to starve and Manoon had to sell five of his remaining cattle. Now thanks to WSPA, feed will be provided to keep Manoon’s three remaining cows alive, along with the rest of the cattle in his village.

With preparedness being key to protecting vulnerable animals and their communities, we visited the local animal evacuation centre, built on higher ground as a centre for housing cattle affected by flooding. WSPA has committed to doing some capacity building work at the centre, such as ensuring there is always emergency feed in the form of hay blocks or other stored feed available if flooding strikes again.

Latest news from Japan

WSPA’s work in Japan with the in-country Animals Disaster Response Team (ADRT) is continuing following the devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11. We've got some news to report about the affected animals – particularly family pets – which are at this moment caught in limbo in the evacuation area surrounding the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant. It’s estimated that a staggering 5,000 cats and dogs had to be left behind by their distraught owners, when the area was evacuated because of high levels of nuclear radiation.

The latest is that the ADRT coalition, which WSPA has supported from the outset, have been asked by the Ministry of Agriculture to join them on a research team trip this Thursday to look at what needs to be done to help the 5,000 companion animals. We hope this will be an important first step in ensuring the authorities are fully appraised of the need for intervention on the part of these beloved and much-missed family pets. WSPA has made funds available for important equipment that the ADRT team will need as part of any work they do in this dangerous environment, and as they prepare for this difficult task we can only hope they are able to achieve a positive outcome for the animals and their concerned owners. Their personal bravery and commitment on behalf of animals is inspirational and we're very proud to be able to help them. WSPA vet Damian Woodberry returns to Japan on Thursday and we hope to have updates from him on the ground in a future blog.

Preparing for Transition in Haiti

This is the first in a series of blogs contributed by Lindsay Fyffe, WSPA's Disaster Response Manager.

So many of you have supported WSPA throughout our disaster relief work in Haiti – from the very beginning when Juan Carlos and Gerardo first landed in Port au Prince, to celebrating a milestone of treating more than 50,000 animals affected by the disaster.

I travel to Haiti tomorrow to help transition our project over to the Ministry of Agriculture, so that it can continue to monitor and support animal health throughout the country, in the years ahead. I very much look forward to witnessing, first hand, all the fantastic work that has been done to help Haitian animals and their communities. Having worked on this project for over a year now, my heart is full of excitement (with a pinch of nervousness!) at what I will see.

I will keep you posted on how my visit goes, and hope to relay some inspiring stories in the days ahead.

Thailand

WSPA's Disaster Operation Vet Officer, Naritsorn Pholperm, talks to Kallaya Kamnuan, ©WSPA

Unseasonably wet weather in Thailand has caused mudslides and flash-flooding, sweeping away bridges, roads and buildings and affecting more than 2 million people in 10 provinces. Just last week, three villages in the Surat Thani province were still under 1 metre of water after three weeks of torrential rain, with up to 40mm falling in some places in 24 hours. Inevitably, huge numbers of animals have also been affected and a WSPA team is currently on the ground assessing their needs. 
 
Initial reports are that the in-country Provincial Department of Livestock and Development (DLD) has been valiantly trying to respond on behalf of the affected livestock, but transport has proved a logistical obstacle. Their primary concern was to deal with the sort of livestock on which so many people in Thailand depend for their livelihoods – goats and cattle, being the most valuable things they own in their lives and without which they face a bleak future.
 
Our team have already met one courageous and inventive woman who found a novel way of ensuring her precious cattle could be safe from the floodwaters – by building a temporary shelter for them and herself on a bridge! Kallaya Kamnuan, is 53 years old and moved to live on the bridge at the end of March, because the floodwaters meant she couldn’t get back to her house. She has already had to travel to another province simply to buy hay for her cattle. The team will be working alongside the DLD to assess the need for feed and veterinary care for people like Kallaya and their animals.

WSPA assists thousands of Bolivian animals

The landlocked South American nation has been severely affected by extreme cold, floods and landslides in the central parts of the country since February, leaving local animals in need of our help.

A WSPA assessment team from our South American office was dispatched to the worst affected areas last month where we identified that thousands of camelids (llama, alpaca and vicuña), cattle and companion animals were in need of veterinary treatment.   

At present, our team is on the ground around the capital, La Paz, and the Department of Bení, in an operation that will provide medical care to as many as 9,700 animals over the coming critical weeks.

In the largest operation, in Bení, we are working alongside the governmental agency, SENASAG, to provide dewormers and mineral salts for 5,000 cattle in the most severely affected municipalities of the area.

High on the plateau of La Paz Department, the municipality of Charazani has been affected by a cold wave, endangering the lives of the camelids which local people depend on for their livelihoods. Again, with the help of SENASAG, we are dispatching essential dewormers, antibiotics and mineral salts for approximately 3,500 animals.

Meanwhile, in the capital itself, together with local vets and students, we are providing veterinary aid to 1,200 companion animals which remain in human rescue centres following the recent disasters.

In the coming days, we hope to receive more information from the team on the ground.

Ishinomaki – an inspiring pace of work

Ishinomaki is one of the cities that got very badly hit by both the earthquake and the resultant tsunami on the 11th of March. When we visited the city, though, I was amazed to see the pace of the reconstruction work that has already begun here! Many of the streets had been cleared of detritus and most of the rubble had already been collected and deposited in vacant lots.
 
In the area just behind the docks the devastation was absolutely unbelievable! Smashed houses, cars everywhere, boats randomly dumped. I saw what looked like a bay… except it was dotted with the remains of houses, and what I’m told used to be fields. Perhaps most shocking was the sight of a massive container ship which had been lifted up and deposited well behind the dock.
 
This is where Kakimoto san first started to go looking for stranded pets. But it was immediately clear there was no chance that any creatures could have survived there. Several animals from further inland were picked up by the tsunami and dumped several kilometres away; unfortunately not all of these survived either.
 
Only two of the eight veterinary clinics that existed in Ishinomaki have survived the disaster. Of these, the Abe Animal Hospital, owned by Dr. Toshinori Abe has become the headquarters for vet response in Ishinomaki. A large group of trained veterinarians and vet technicians are currently working there. 
 
Members of the public often phone in to the Abe Hospital to report both living and dead animals; volunteers with the clinic respond to every call, heading out to locate the animal and bring it back to the clinic. Rescued animals are scanned for microchips or identifying information, and receive immediate medical attention from the vets at the Abe hospital. 
 
When they checked over this rescued dachshund, vets discovered she had two very large bladder stones that were certain to be causing tremendous pain! Fortunately, Dr. Abe was able to operate on her the very next day and removed both stones. At the time we visited, she was recovering well from both, the ordeal she’d suffered as well as the surgery. She presently has the company of about 30 dogs and cats at the clinic, and one lone rabbit.
 
Dr. Toshinori Abe and the rest of his team at the Abe Hospital are doing such wonderful work in Ishinomaki, it was truly rewarding to witness it first hand. The ADRT has already delivered over two tonnes of supplies to the hospital, including cases of dog food, medicines, cages, jerry cans of petrol etc so it was particularly gratifying to see how our support is helping deliver aid to some of the animals in Japan.
 
A large number of schools are presently being used as evacuation shelters, which is great because they can use separate classrooms to house those with or without pets, meaning that families don’t need to be separated from their pets. But as the Japanese begin to resume normal routines as best as they can after the disaster, they are going to need these premises so the children can start to go to school again.
 
In preparation, the vets in Ishinomaki are therefore preparing to set up shelters to house the animals close to where the families will be relocated. Your continuing support will allow us to help them set up more of these shelters so that families can continue to care for their pets in these difficult times.

Visiting animal shelters in Niigata

On Sunday, 2nd April a joint team from WSPA and the Humane Society International (HSI) joined members of the Japanese Animal Disaster Response Team (ADRT) to visit animal shelters in the cities of Niigata, Ishinomaki and Sendai – the worst hit from the earthquake and resultant tsunami of 11th March 2011.

Niigata has seen an influx of at least 7000 people from Fukushima, now staying in evacuation centres. In Niigata, the team met with local hero Mr Akitsugu Kakimoto, who runs his own animal welfare charity called ‘Pet With’. Years ago, Kakimoto san took over a ‘dog entertainment park’ where over 200 dogs were kept and trained to perform tricks. He closed down the business, found new, caring homes for 190 of these dogs and kept 30 of the oldest ones in comfortable enclosures. For the last several years, he has used the establishment to run boarding kennels and a grooming parlour for pets. Following the earthquake, he has been providing shelter to abandoned pets, and is also acting as the coordinator for the various agencies taking action in Niigata to help the animals there.

The team visited one of the evacuation centres in Niigata – an erstwhile sports stadium. Since this is essentially a large, open area, people were not allowed to keep their animals alongside other families. However, the authorities did put up a prefabricated building right outside the stadium and furnished it with comfortable cages where people could house their pets.

The owners get to spend as much time with their animals as they like, since each owner (or indeed, family!) is responsible for the cleaning, walking and feeding of their pets. Local vets come by on a regular basis, to administer medication, treat wounds and provide advice to pet owners. Mr Kakimoto makes regular rounds of all the evacuation centres in Niigata, making sure that animals are included in all their plans.

Kakimoto san is also very well known to the team from the WSPA member society JAWS. In the days before transport links between Sendai and Tokyo were restored, JAWS got in touch with him and asked him what he could do for the animals in Sendai, as no one from Tokyo was able to get in. He first got to Sendai on the Saturday following the earthquake, and has since been visiting the city at least twice a week – each time he carries supplies of pet food and medications, visiting the animal shelters, local vets, the Sendai City Animal Control Centre and those human evacuation shelters that are allowing pets in.

One of the dogs Damian met in Niigata is called Taro. Taro is one of about ten dogs that were brought in to Pet With; these dogs came from inside the 20km exclusion zone around the Daichi nuclear plant. Officials from the Fukushima Animal Control Centre checked them for signs of radiation exposure and gave them warm soapy baths to decontaminate them.

While nine of the ten dogs from Fukushima that were brought in to Pet With were reclaimed by their owners, Taro was not. But he seems quite happy to be with Mr. Kakimoto, and appeared well settled at Pet With.

Equally happy seems this lovely dog, reunited with his owner – although she instantly recognized him as belonging to her, this elderly lady couldn’t remember her dog’s name! Nonetheless, both of them seem well pleased to be reunited and drawing comfort from each other’s presence.

Tomorrow, we will bring you an update from Ishinomaki and Sendai – watch this space!