HURRICANE KATRINA — DEVASTATION LINGERS (19 years ago my Personal Story) | The Healthy American Peggy Hall

Hey friends, Peggy Hall back with you from the healthyamerican.org. Exactly 19 years ago, I arrived from Los Angeles to Louisiana and I flew into New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. You might have been like me and you saw on the news and you heard reports and you saw images of people stuck in their homes reaching out for help and images like this. Let me share my screen. You probably saw things like you probably saw images like this. People were being rescued from the roofs of their homes and I was just absolutely horrified hearing about all of the animals that had been left behind because at that time during the evacuations these animals were not allowed into places like the Superdome and other evacuation centers.

Illegally, I might add, luckily now these laws have changed and people are able to bring their animals into these evacuation centers. A lot of people left Louisiana and they evacuated to Texas and other places and because the devastation was so severe, they either were unable to return, the city of New Orleans and surrounding areas were closed, it was under martial law and only those who were doing rescue work were able to go in. Now in the very beginning, and in fact let me read you a little bit just if you aren’t aware of what happened, and this is a summary.

It says Hurricane Katrina was a devastating tropical cyclone. It started as a tropical cyclone. It had nearly 1,400 fatalities and it happened in late August 2005, particularly in the city of New Orleans and its surrounding area. I know I’m not pronouncing it correctly, I’m not from that area. So this was the fourth most intense Atlantic hurricane to ever make landfall in the contiguous United States. So it started as a tropical depression and then a tropical storm and then it made landfall at Hallandale Beach on August 25th in Florida and then it strengthened into a hurricane.

It hovered a little bit over the Gulf of Mexico and then it intensified and it came on shore as a category five hurricane. That probably was one of the first hurricanes that I really was aware of. You know I don’t really follow the news but because it had a very strong element of animal rescue, I was just riveted and I wasn’t the only one. Thousands of people from around the United States made their way to Louisiana, to New Orleans. We actually were set up in Baton Rouge and we were stationed in what was called the Lamar Dixon Expo Center.

It was actually in Gonzales, Louisiana, very close to Baton Rouge and I put in to serve as a volunteer. I knew that they were rescuing animals and keeping them there and I figured they needed somebody to clean the kennels and feed the dogs and walk the dogs and just be a companion for the animals there. So I had been in animal rescue for most of my life. So I filled out an application. I applied with the ASPCA, the Humane Society of the United States. Come to find out those organizations, although they have a lot of money, they weren’t really that well run and what was an emergency really turned into a catastrophe.

I went there twice. The first time I spent about 10 days, I’m going to show you some pictures there just to share my personal story of the aftermath of a hurricane and then I returned another time to assist and that was a couple of months later. So picture this, the hardest hit areas of the hurricane that happened at the end of August. I was allowed to come on board at the very end of September. So the idea was to go into these homes where animals had been abandoned. Apparently people thought that they were going to come back after a weekend and why they didn’t take their animals wherever they went to Texas or something.

I don’t know, but these animals were left at home. In some cases, they had a bathtub full of water. In some cases, they didn’t have enough food or water. And of course, thousands of these animals perished. It was a very, very difficult situation. I’m going to share with you some photos, actual photos, because yes, this was nearly 20 years ago and cell phone cameras weren’t like they are today. I don’t even think I had a phone on my camera and we certainly didn’t have any navigation. We had a paper map and we would be sent out in two people teams so that we could go and rescue these animals where people had emailed the Humane Society and ASPCA and the other rescue groups in the area saying, please check on my animal.

I love them. Here’s where I live and I’m very worried. So thousands of, it seemed like thousands, at least many hundreds of volunteers from all over the country made their way to Louisiana. I had to sleep in the car. I had to get my credentials from the ASPCA or the Humane Society in order to even go. And the entire city of New Orleans was shut down and it was under martial law, which means you could not enter that city. You could only enter the city between dawn and dusk. And at one time I was alone.

I didn’t have a partner and I was actually there after dusk and I saw all of the flashing lights and it was very, very treacherous because there were no regular lights on and there were no lights in anyone’s homes because all of the electricity was out. And I mean, in an area that I don’t know anything about, I don’t have a navigation system. I only have a paper map and I was absolutely terrified that I was going to be arrested being in the city after the hours of curfew, but I didn’t make it back to the camp.

The Lamar Dixon Expo Center, it’s like where they have farm animals and agriculture events and that kind of thing, like a county fair. And in all of the horse stalls, this is where they would have the crates of animals that had been brought in by people like us that were finding them on the streets or locked into homes. Many of the animal, I can’t say many, but some of the animals were returned to their rightful owners. Many of the other animals were rescued by people like me. I’m going to show a couple of pictures and other animal groups.

There was a lot of red tape. Louisiana did not make it easy to help these animals. And I just want to share with you my own personal experience of really PTSD of being in what was basically a war zone and how very devastating it was. Let me just share with you a couple of pictures and just to kind of set the scene here. As I say, these were actual photographs. And like we’re hearing in Asheville and other places, it seems like some of the hardest hit areas were the most economically depressed. So that just is so very distressing.

And here is a boat that ended up on the side of someone’s house. This actually is me. And I’ve got a little dog that we rescued out of this building, which really looks like it’s public housing. Again, I’m not familiar with those areas. And we were just going in with God’s protection and direction. We didn’t know if we would be faced by people or they would try to harm us or hurt us or stop us from breaking in. And we literally would break into these houses. So this is another picture of this housing project.

And I think I have a picture of a woman. Okay, this is not me, but this was one of my rescue partners. And we would go in with a crowbar and we would break in through the window. Here she’s taking the air conditioner out and we would crawl in through the window where we heard barking or meowing. And we would go in to rescue the animals. As I say, this was one that we got out of that house. How the dog was still alive after a month, I don’t know, other than there must have been enough food and water for that animal.

Because sadly, a lot of the scenes that we saw were just of unspeakable horror. And that’s part of the reason I’m still suffering from PTSD from what I saw and experienced. Again, just some debris in the road. There were no people in the city. That’s what was so eerie. It was only the animal rescuers and then the first responders. And I did meet with some military, I think it was the Marines, it might have been army vets, but they were there as veterinarians to help in triage. And they said that they had served in the Gulf War and that what they had seen there was as bad as what they were witnessing here in New Orleans.

Now, here’s a little black kitty cat and we would see these animals, some of them on the street. And if they looked pretty healthy and people were leaving food, strangely, it was better to leave them there because we didn’t want to bring them into the center where they were going to be euthanized. And I’m horrified to have found out several days into the rescue operation that that’s what was happening to some of these animals, especially pit bulls. So here we would see images like this dog under house alive. And then I don’t know what the F.W.

stood for, but that would be where people would leave food and water or they would try to tempt the animal to come out. Here’s more boats just showing up in gas stations and things like that. Here’s another one, it says dogs. And then there’s a date with when they were visited. You can see there were there were little cat food and dog food dishes left under many houses. Here’s another one, the symbols meant something about when someone was there that says 912. So again, that would have been September 12. And then the symbols for the animals that were there.

Here’s some more just of the devastation that I experienced. This car was mine that I rented, and it says animal rescue. And I actually slept in my car. I did a video previously about my life in a FEMA camp, because FEMA was there and they did set up tents. And they had giant boxes of like protein bars, only they were sort of the junk food protein bars. And so the only thing in way of food that we had to eat was packaged foods like packaged crackers and cheese, and these protein bars and instant oatmeal and all of that there was no electricity, there were some generators, but there was no real nourishing food.

And there was so much high energy and stress and anxiety that most of us were not sleeping. I mean, I would be studying the maps and looking at the addresses. Again, I had no nav system. So we had a paper map, and so many of the roads were closed, we were trying to figure out where we were going. And the system of sending us out for the rescue was in such disarray that some people were going to the same house again and again, where other neighborhoods were completely neglected. Being an organizer and a person with ideas and someone who likes to get things done, I had a lot of ideas for improving this.

And when I went to speak to the people in charge, they didn’t want to hear it. So it was so frustrating. And as I say, an emergency became a catastrophe and the number of lives lost in terms of animals was just catastrophic. I can say that there were so many good hearted people and I focused on all of the animals that we did save. And even though they were inept in their organization in getting things done in terms of the ASPCA and the Humane Society, remember, these are not national government groups. These are just private groups, nonprofit, where people send money.

And I don’t send any money to the ASPCA or the Humane Society of the United States, because all they do is send me, not all they do, but one of the things they do is they send me a calendar. And then they also give thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars to their CEOs and managers and all of that. So personally, I give my money to the small rescue groups. And I’ve done videos about this before. So if you’re interested, you can go to my sub stack, peggyhall.substack.com. And you can see some of the sub stacks and links that I have there.

So that really opened my eyes quite a bit to all of that. Again, areas that were economically depressed were really hard hit. This was one of the lucky dogs that was rescued. You can see how skinny he is, or she is. It’s just very, very heartwarming to see that there were so many people going there in good faith, coming from other states and looking to rescue these animals. So here’s a happy girl that got rescued from that house. Actually, it was the apartments here that were like public housing. And here’s another one here.

And you can see that was pretty much how we would enter. Now, what’s interesting is when we were there in this one tenement building, I remember as I was walking around, and we would just call out, like we were calling for a dog, hey, sweetheart. And we would whistle and try to listen for barking or meowing or anything like that. And I remember seeing a group of guys in a pickup truck, and they had like, I don’t know, a whole pickup truck full of all these TVs. And in my anxiety and lack of sleep and lack of nutrition, I thought, oh my gosh, that’s so great that these guys are going around and donating these TVs to people who have had, you know, losses and destruction.

And it wasn’t until some days later that I realized that I was in this dangerous area, and these were looters. And thank God, with the protection of, you know, God’s good graces, I was protected. And I never felt that I was in any personal danger whatsoever. I did not have any personal protection on me, other than my prayers. And I just felt God calling me to do that work. So the good news that came out of Hurricane Katrina for me, is that I did rescue several, I rescued several animals, but I also brought back several cats to California.

I literally got them on a plane, brought them back. And my Elsie, who passed away sadly, a few months ago in May, at the age of 19, was one of the kitty cats that I rescued. And I’ll share her picture here. Here she is with itty bitty. So here’s Elsie right here. Here’s itty bitty. They were probably about four to five months old, when I rescued them and itty bitty, a little bit more full grown here. And she passed away sadly, during all of the hogwash. So I brought back several cats and found homes for those cats.

And then during that time, I also was able to arrange for a flight to take the animals out of New Orleans and fly them out to California where they would be met by rescue groups and rescue partners who could then find homes for them. So that was through a private individual and a private jet and private funds. And so there was a lot of great work that was going on there. Sadly, so many animals perished. And it really affected me at a deep level in terms of animal rescue. I think that’s why they trained first responders to be at these events.

Because those of us with a compassionate heart, our hearts were breaking even more so because we weren’t like tough, didn’t have the tough skin to speak for myself to witness what I witnessed. I’ve got this beautiful paw print necklace here, which reminds me of my all of my beloved precious animals that have passed on and all of the animals that need our care that have been neglected and abandoned. And thinking now in terms of Hurricane Helene, if you were asking me where to donate, I would try to reach out locally, perhaps on Facebook or on Instagram, or if you know someone in that area, to donate directly to the local rescue groups that are doing the work.

I know that Trump has a GoFundMe. And you know, all those GoFundMe that happened with Maui come to find out so much of that money was not given to the people that you thought it was going to go to. So it’s your money. It’s your conscience. I’m not telling you where to donate or how to donate. But these are things that I’ve observed in my experience. So I just wanted to share that with you, friends, what I experienced in the aftermath of the hurricane. And I only have a glimpse of what people are experiencing.

I did not lose any home. I did not lose any animals. I did not lose a small business or loved ones. So my prayers are with those who are devastated and experiencing this indescribable pain and loss. Thank you, everyone, for being on board. I really appreciate you. Stay tuned for tomorrow, because I’ve got your cards and letters that have come in to me. And I decided that every Friday, I’m going to be sharing kind of the mailbag Friday with all of your words of encouragement and support. And my goal is for you to be encouraged.

I love having you on board as part of our healthy American community. And the work that we do can be very wearying. It can really wear you down. So I want you to be encouraged by the wonderful cards and messages that I receive from all of my healthy Americans. I also will have a short video for you tomorrow about Christine Massey, who is a Canadian, who has been standing up against all of the hogwash and actually sending out these Freedom of Information Act requests to governments all over the world requiring and requesting that they send evidence of these particles that are causing these diseases and are at the underpinning of all of these emergencies that are inflicted upon us.

So I’ll be bringing you a little update and how that ties into Orange County, California. Thank you again, everyone. I really appreciate you watching this entire video. Again, if you need any prep in order to get ready, I use the food. Yes, it is processed food, but it’s easy. And it’s something that you can have on hand. I call it food insurance. You can find it at preparewithpeggy.com. We’ve got a bucket for each member of our family. There’s a 25-year shelf life. And even though it’s not food that I eat on a daily basis, I know that could mean the difference between me surviving and starving when the going gets tough.

So that’s something that just gives me peace of mind. If you don’t want to purchase it ready-made like that, make sure that you’ve got your own stores of foods that will last that you like to eat and that are convenient for you to take with you if you need to evacuate quickly. [tr:trw].

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