When UC Davis veterinary professor John Madigan learned of the flooding in the Olivehurst area, he pulled out his wet suit and waders, rounded up a few veterinary colleagues and headed for the high water.
In the wake of the January deluge, horses had been left standing to their necks in water, dogs were stranded on car and house tops, pigs were perched on floating debris.
For two days the crew worked to save the stranded animals. Their first order of business was to move the animals to higher ground. Using airboats supplied by the Department of the Interior to reach them, they towed or led livestock to levees, where possible, or at least to shallower water. Dogs and cats, pigs and chickens were carried to safety.
"We found animals just standing, stuck, with their heads barely out of the water," said Madigan. "Some were unable to move because of fences and objects under water around them, or they just didn't know how to go over to higher ground." The team saw many others who had already lost the battle, who had slipped beneath the water and drowned.
The second day the crew returned to get food to still-stranded animals and to treat their injuries. Many had suffered from hypothermia and pneumonia from the cold water or from wounds from objects under water like barbed-wire fences and farm equipment. Others had drunk contaminated water or been burned by toxic chemicals. Some of the more seriously injured animals were brought back to UC Davis' Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital (VMTH).
This was not Madigan's first experience with animal rescue. A member of the California Veterinary Medical Association Disaster Committee, he has participated in more than a dozen such operations, most of them involving the use of a sling he has developed to airlift horses from such predicaments as heavy snow, cliff sides or deep water. He was joined in the Yuba County effort by veterinarian Robin Kelly, animal health technicians Butch Littrell and Catherine Glines, animal resources supervisor Connie Littrell and veterinary students Lisa Hofmann and Jesse Deux. In addition, some 30 veterinary students helped care for flood-displaced animals at the Placer County Fairgrounds in Roseville. Approximately 700 dogs, cats, horses, birds and cattle were given shelter, food and care there.
The owners of all the animals brought to the VMTH have since been identified, and the animals have been returned to their homes or the homes of volunteers who can provide continuing care as wounds heal. Of the 700 animals at the Placer County Fairgrounds, some 400 were reunited with their owners and the rest adopted or placed in foster homes. In some cases the tragedy had been compounded for the animals by the inability of their families, having lost most everything in the flood, to care for them any longer. Such was the case for a Saint Bernard (shown above) plucked from the top of a car and dubbed Levee by his rescuers. But his story, like that of most of the animals, has a happy ending. He was quickly adopted by a new family.
