The horrendous aftermath of Katrina, when thousands of pets were left stranded, has prompted many to take on disaster preparedness and pets as a crusade. The people involved with the following movie are doing just that. A large portion of the proceeds from this movie will go toanimal welfare causes throughout the country.

Dark Water Rising, The Ultimate Hero’s Tale in Documentary Form
By Kim Upham
Aug. 1, 2006 2006, Rated PG-13, 75 minutes

If you only see one film on the subject of Hurricane Katrina, this is the one to see. Dark Water Rising: The Truth About Hurricane Katrina Animal Rescues chronicles the volunteer efforts to rescue pets left in peril after their owners fled New Orleans and were prevented from returning to retrieve them. Beyond its overt message, that Americans need to take better care of animals, Dark Water Rising is an indictment of what is wrong in our government: “compassion” is merely a slogan for political gain, not a modus operandi.

The film documents the plight of thousands of animals who perished in the floods, or who waited hour after hour, day after day for owners or help that never arrived, trapped in homes or braving the toxic streets in 105-degree heat indexes bereft of food, water and shelter. Dark Water Rising underscores the fact that animals suffered because humans failed them. No one can stop a category five hurricane from ravaging a city, but the government’s failure at every level to plan for evacuation ahead of time, as well as its inadequate response to the chaos and crisis afterward, resulted in needless death and prolonged anguish of both humans and animals.

The film opens with a post-apocalyptic scene of seemingly endless rubble, and a narration of the obstacles facing animal rescuers, many of whom traveled from far away states at their own expense, putting family, children, pets and jobs on hold. Those obstacles include searing heat, inaccessible homes, packs of loose dogs, bureaucratic red tape, and toxic streets filled with chemicals, raw sewage, and rotting garbage. Filmmaker Mike Shiley in interviews called post-Katrina New Orleans worse than Iraq, the setting of his last documentary film, Inside Iraq.

From the get-go, it’s clear that the rescuers are understaffed and overwhelmed by both the scope of the problem and the time-critical nature of the effort, with some 50,000 pets left behind, by conservative estimates. Despite the odds, and with little regard for their personal safety or comfort, the rescuers worked from dawn until long past dark for over six weeks to meet the need. The rescuers’ story, and that of the stranded pets, has gone largely untold; the mainstream media pulled up stakes after the human drama ended or moved to Houston, while the animal side of the disaster response was just getting under way.

The film contrasts the approach of the Humane Society of the United States and other national animal organizations with that of a smaller, renegade group called Winn-Dixie, named for the abandoned grocery store’s parking lot that became its base of operations. The Humane Society, which raised $30 million for rescue efforts, operated an enormous makeshift shelter and staging area, employing hundreds of volunteers at a time and sheltering up to 2,500 animals. Eventually, animals had to be flown to other states to make room for new arrivals.

As the film depicts, pets are documented and tracked so they can be reunited with anxious owners. However, in one scene a rescuer declines to give the address of a rescued brown pit bull and instead gives only cross-streets. The film touches on the breeding and fighting of pit bulls, a practice New Orleans is known for, as well as the deplorable conditions under which some dogs were kept, restrained in backyards on log chains. Such restraint meant that many dogs drowned in the flooding, unable to swim to safety, and rescuers remained haunted by their images.

Another haunting story is that of a school where evacuated owners entrusted their pets to law enforcement officers who allegedly tortured and killed them. In the scene, rescuers collect evidence to bring the responsible parties to justice. Owners forced to leave their pets pleaded with officers through written messages on the school’s walls to care for their pets and find them good loving homes, but the opposite occurred.

The message of the film ultimately is one of hope, as relieved owners are reunited with their family pets, and other cats and dogs find new loving homes. In one segment dogs are temporarily housed at a prison, giving inmates a chance to care for and bond with them, transforming both man and his best friend. And rail-thin dogs just days from death get a new lease on life as they are saved in the nick of time.

In the end, the viewer is left to conclude that the animal suffering could have been avoided by adequate planning, allowing pets to be evacuated with their owners. Forcing owners to leave their dog or cat behind also put people in peril, since some refused to leave without their animals.

It may be possible to cynically dismiss the human suffering, claiming that people had the chance to evacuate the city before the hurricane’s landfall and chose not to. But our sympathy for the pets is undiluted by such arguments, because pets are subject to the choices of their owners, and in this case the owners’ hands were tied by government policies.

This film resonates emotionally, since after the humans were eventually evacuated what remained was an empty, eerily quiet city populated only by pets. Only then were the animal rescuers allowed into the city to do their work. As with human rescue earlier, time was critically short. But there were far fewer resources to deploy in finding animals, and the pets were mostly hidden from view in homes, making locating them far more challenging.

Whether owners chose to leave their pets behind, thought they’d be back after a few days, or were forced by government policies to abandon their pets, the animals paid the price. Compassion and relief came in the form of a small band of dedicated individuals willing to make personal sacrifices to alleviate animal suffering. As one rescuer writes in the film’s epilogue, “Tragedies will happen again, and we will be there with dog food and leashes in hand.” These are the kind of heroes that great films are made of. For that reason, this film is a gripping must-see.

View the trailer for Dark Water Rising