"On Wednesday, May 4th Terri Crisp (Director of Ears) called and asked if I was available to come to Oklahoma City. She and her team of disaster coordinators were already there and they were gearing up with trained volunteers to augment what they call "convergent volunteers". That is the local people who just show up to help. Sixty plus dogs were already being cared for along with a few cats.
When I called Terri back to let her know when I would be there, she informed me that the operation had been moved to the Moore Oklahoma Animal Shelter.
On the road by 9AM Friday, it didn't take long to see damage as I headed west out of town, through Sapulpa. Stroud was a shock to see even after seeing so many pictures on the news. South of the I-35 interchange and the city limits of Moore, the traffic slowed to a snail's pace, where the tornado had crossed the roadway leaving mangled cars heaped in a cloverleaf.
I found the shelter. It was a fairly new metal building. Terri and several coordinators were in the front office. I asked where they needed me; in about 2 minutes I was feeding cats and scooping litter boxes. After that came washing dishes, making coffee, cleaning up the kitchen, a trip to WalMart, cleaning out dog runs, and unloading hundreds and hundreds, and HUNDREDS of pounds of dog and cat food, and kitty litter. Cases of flea spray and shampoo, leashes, collars, fans, extension cords, duct tape, wheeled garbage cans for food storage and on and on! One thing we did not have nearly enough of was towels and bedding. I mentioned that to someone who had just dropped off food and POOF towels and blankets began to arrive about two hours later. Amazing!!
After a couple of hours, a steady stream of people seemed to be the norm. People making donations, those that had found animals or were looking for their pets and people wanting to help out in various ways.
I was surprised there weren't more animals. The shelter wasn't yet at its full capacity of about 30 dogs and 10 cats. Then I discovered we were at the new shelter, which had only been open 6 weeks. The old shelter was about 100 yards down the road and around the corner. There I found more animals. The youngest was a 6-week-old pit bull pup. I called him Squealer in light of the fact that he was our smallest and loudest resident. He was held a lot just to get some peace and quiet. Like human babies, once he was asleep his "mommies" would gently put him back in his bed where he would sleep until someone inadvertently woke him up. We also had a couple of dogs that were brought in by their owners to be boarded because they just could not care for them at the moment.
