Helping

I've been reading about the flooding of the Mississippi river - I had received an email from a group that helps animals in disaster areas, United Animal Nations, about rescuing animals in the flood zone. This reminded me about the post I had earlier about helping animals in Japan after the earthquake, tsunami, radiation leak. For those interested in reading about what's happening with the animals in Japan now and in other disaster areas, there's a recent storey on the subject ... They Walk With Us, We Carry Them: Disaster Planning for Pets. Here's the beginning of it ...

7:03pm | Fires, floods, weird weather, earthquakes, a tsunami and what may be soon considered the worst nuclear disaster in history… We briefly entertained the notion of building an ark but scotched the idea because you’re only allowed to save two of each nonhuman species.

Animal rescuer Isabella Gallaon-Aoki, founder of Animal Friends Niigata in Niigata, Japan, has been rescuing animals in the Fukushima danger zone caused by the earthquake and the resulting tsunami and nuclear disaster. People fleeing the scene let their pets go free so that they wouldn’t get hurt, Gallaon-Aoki said during an April 14 CNN interview with Anderson Cooper.

Unlike the United States, where an increasing number of states and communities are instituting FEMA-supported so-called “No Pet Left Behind” legislation, there is no government disaster plan for pets and no support for lost, abandoned and starving animals in Japan. And so Gallaon-Aoki and her group walked into a life-threatening condition and literally hunted down pets too frightened and hungry to remember that humans can be their friends .......


- A kitty rescued by UAN during a Butte County, Calif., fire. Photo courtesy of Alexis Raymond, UAN.