The Next Window

Volunteers from the Cajun Clickers Computer Club in Baton Rouge were busy again yesterday, inputting data for our Katrina Pet Rescue Project. Cajun Clickers is an all-volunteer computer club, with almost 1,800 families as members.

We are the primary input site for rescue my pet phone calls and emails to the official Katrina pet rescue addresses.

We thought that Tuesday (9/13) would be our last day, but the State's Office of Animal Health Services asked us to keep going.

We finally got some publicity yesterday!

First up was The Advocate, Baton Rouge's newspaper. We got a picture and caption on the Club News pages, not the real news section, but it was our first published acknowledgement of our efforts.

The OAHS has been working on the TV stations. Our own publicity director Vera Martin has been working on the print and TV media. Their efforts finally paid off!

Yesterday, Avery Davidson of WAFB / Channel 9 came to see what we're doing and to interview me. We expect this to be on the 5pm or 6pm news today (Friday) on WAFB.

Read more about Cajun Clickers Computer Club's Katrina Pet Rescue Project.

Volunteers from the Cajun Clickers Computer Club in Baton Rouge are still busy inputting data for our Katrina Pet Rescue Project.

We are building a growing, massive spreadsheet of pet rescue requests. The Louisiana SPCA & HSUS use this for planning animal rescues and the State uses for coordinating other offers of help. We input the phone call logs from the State's Office of Animal Health Services and input the emails they receive for requesting pet rescues, reports of lost animals, offers to foster animals, offers of donations of goods, and offers to volunteer.

So far, we have had over 70 individual volunteers working at different times in our 15-computer lab, with up to 19 computers in use at one time (15+4 personal notebooks). Our volunteers have put in almost 700 man hours in the last 9 days to create the rescue scheduling tool, with some volunteers putting in 10 to 15 hours per day every day.

Each day, we complete the inputs all the data that we receive that day, consolidate individual spreadsheets into the master, add spreadsheets from some third parties and provide it to the Louisiana SPCA, to the Humane Society of the United States and to Louisiana's Office of Animal Health Services.

Read more about Cajun Clickers Computer Club's Katrina Pet Rescue Project.

The Louisiana SPCA and the Louisiana Office of Animal Health Services are working together to rescue and temporarily house the pets and other animals abandoned because of Hurricane Katrina. Some of these animals were left because the evacuations of people would not let the people take their animals.

Volunteers from the Cajun Clickers Computer Club have been assisting them by inputting emails and call logs that report pets in need of rescue.

The SPCA and the OAHS need money. You can help by contributing online at theLouisiana Veterinarian Medical Association's website.

Donate online to Katrina Pet Rescue.

Donate by mail to Katrina Pet Rescue

Read more about Cajun Clickers Computer Club's efforts on the Katrina Pet Rescue Project.

I spent all day today, and expect to do so for the next few days, as part of the team of Cajun Clickers Computer Club (www.clickers.org) volunteers working for the Office of Animal Health Services of the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry. The Office is coordinating the State's communication efforts and logging calls and emails for the Louisiana SPCA, which is doing the actual rescues along with law-enforcement personnel.

After I met with the State's Assistant Vet, and worked in their offices for a couple hours to get the volunteer project going, I met the rest of the Cajun Clickers volunteers at the Clickers offices with our project.

The Clickers volunteers are inputting all the phone call data and emails into an Excel spreadsheet for use by the SPCA in its efforts and by the OAHS in its efforts to coordinate donations and foster care for animals.

We had about 17 volunteers for about 5 hours entering data into individual copies of the State's spreadsheet, which I then consolidated into a “today” spreadsheet file and then updated the masterfile to add all these entries.

It was a long day, with lots of typing, no slow time and lots of effort by all. At that, we had it much easier than the volunteers manning the phones in the OAHS offices, because we didn't have to talk to all the frantic people.

We also had a Cajun Clickers volunteer drive south to the Lamar-Dixon Convention center to take pictures of pets that had been evacuated to there. This is more of the effort to match up pets with their owners. The people evacuations in New Orleans were “people only” and pets had to be left behind.

This has also given me a marvelous sense of the giving nature of people across the country. From people volunteering to drive from California or Michigan to help evacuate animals; to people in many states offering to house dogs, cats, horses, cattle, etc; to people offering to send donations and suggestions on how to make the donation process easier (LOTS of people said “use Paypal!”); to veterinary medicine doctors and technicians volunteering to come help; to people sending canned pet food, leashes, bowls and such; and to the huge number of writers who asked “what can I do? what do you need?”

I published a Special Edition update of my Terry's Computer Tips newsletter today with updated info on the Katrina aftermath.

See the Special Edition in the Terry's Computer Tips newsletter archives.

Katrina has come and gone. Fortunately, east of us and even slightly east of New Orleans.

Katrina caused flooding in an estimated 80% of New Orleans. Wind damage was severe, also, but more so in the more-highly treed areas north east and north west of New Orleans. There are news reports of a 200 foot break in a levee near the central part of New Orleans. Some suburb areas suffered from water rising above levees.

Baton Rouge, on the other hand, is about 60 miles west-north-west of New Orleans. We got wind. Boy, did we get wind, but we did not get much rain out of the storm.

Baton Rouge's issues are all wind-related — some trees lost, lots of limbs down, and some of those trees and limbs on the power lines.

Personally, my power went off at 6:20am on Katrina Day and came on shortly before midnight. We lost limbs from trees, a few shingles from the roof, and an Italian Cedar tree that blew over and took out a section of fence. None of those were significant. The power outage was more frustrating than anything else, as temperatures stayed in the low 80's all day to high 70's after dark. There are still a lot of Baton Rouge areas without power.

Our thoughts and prayers go to all those residents of New Orleans, Slidell (LA), Biloxi (MS), Gulf Port (MS) neighboring areas and points north, who were affected much more dramatically, with lives lost, homes flooded, homes destroyed and businesses damaged or destroyed. The storm is now in mid-Tennessee and headed north-north-east.

The American Red Cross is in its emergency response mode as usual in situations like this. They need donations.

South Florida has already enjoyed the caresses and buffets of Hurricane Katrina. Katrina was upgraded from Tropical Storm to Hurricane just about the time it hit landfall in South Florida on Thursday.

After quickly passing W-S-W through Florida, it moved into the Gulf of Mexico where it has continued to strengthen.

Currently a Class 3 Hurricane, there is a significant chance of it growing to a Class 4 Hurricane before making landfall on the northern Gulf coast, somewhere between the central Louisiana coast and the Florida Panhandle.

Quoting the National Weather Service's 10pm CDT Saturday 8/27/05 update:

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS REMAIN NEAR 115 MPH WITH HIGHER GUSTS. KATRINA IS A CATEGORY THREE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE. STRENGTHENING IS FORECAST DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS…AND KATRINA COULD BECOME A CATEGORY FOUR HURRICANE ON SUNDAY.

Landfall is expected somewhere on Monday. The current forecast track centers on New Orleans with a projected landfall around 7am Central Daylight Time.