Documenting the aftermath for animals of Hurricane Florence POST
Story and video by Kelly Guerin.
All images by Jo-Anne McArthur except where noted.
What could we learn from this tragedy if we focused, instead, on the millions of animals that had been excluded from the death toll and the massive farming systems that had kept them there? That was the question we came to ask.
Pigs who survived the hurricane and escaped their farm, swim through flood waters. Photo: Kelly Guerin
In September of 2018, Hurricane Florence was fast approaching the coast of North Carolina. These devastating category 4 storms, which used to happen once every hundred years, are – forebodingly – becoming more familiar to the region. Families with homes in high-risk areas knew the drill; most began to evacuate, bundling their children and pets into their cars along with their precious belongings, photo albums, family heirlooms, anything they could fit.
We arrived separately, Jo and I, just three days after Florence had passed. Media agencies worldwide were descending upon the Carolinas to cover the aftermath of the storm, but we were familiar with the types of coverage that natural disasters such as these had received in the past: loss of human life, property damage, and often-vague references to environmental destruction. But what could we learn from this tragedy if we focused, instead, on the millions of animals that had been excluded from the death toll and the massive farming systems that had kept them there? That was the question we came to ask.
Aerial views of CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) farms. North Carolina, USA.
Jo immediately boarded a small plane and joined the Waterkeeper Alliance on a surveying mission to document the catastrophic damage from above. Many of the farms were almost completely submerged; shiny metal rectangles against brown flood water indicated that not only had the farms been severely damaged, but so had the toxic open-air waste lagoons dug next to them. These lagoons of effluent, referred to as “cesspools” by Rick Dove, founder of Waterkeeper Alliance, contain deadly concoctions of e. Coli, antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, and highly potent chemicals used to treat the waste itself. As we would come to find out, these contaminated waters would be responsible for the deaths of unimaginable numbers of surviving animals, including wildlife, in the weeks to come.
While Jo captured the magnitude of the damage from above, I stepped into my newly-purchased waders and set out with a local team in Duplin County to try to get as close to these flooded farms as possible. Photographer Daniel Turbert and local activist Caroline Byrd had spent the past few days out in the waters with animal rescue teams, attempting to locate any surviving animals. They arranged again for a boat to navigate us deep into the flood zone.
A small neighbourhood had been so severely flooded that the main street had turned into a sort of boat ramp for a handful of journalists and hired local guides. When it came time for us to launch into the water, we did not follow the other boats to the rows of houses but instead broke off to the left into what looked like a wide open lake.
I saw the bodies long before I saw any barn. Broiler chickens. Hundreds of them, bloated and floating gently in the brown standing water. Each pair of feet splayed wildly beneath them set off a new pang of panic in my chest imagining their final, terrifying moments. As we passed them, a putrid smell of rot and feces grew heavier in the air and I struggled to maintain my composure. The boat sprayed tiny drops of flood water on my camera and face as I filmed. At one point, our guide Shane cut the motor momentarily, mentioning casually that we were passing above a barbed wire fence. Giant barns loomed in the distance.
Industrial farm surrounded by flood water. North Carolina, USA.
Under normal circumstances, CAFOs are a frantic place: the whirring of industrial fans, the suffocating air, the panicked vocalizations from the sometimes tens of thousands of animals inside, and the fear and adrenaline of trying to document as much as possible without getting caught. But on this day, as we drifted through the rows of these half-submerged barns, we heard only haunting silence. Behind those locked doors was the sound and smell of death on an unimaginable scale.
Below Left: Drowned chickens in sludge.
Below Right: Pan of drowned chickens floating beside flooded CAFO barns
We followed the floating bodies like a trail until we found it, one door on one of the barns had been cracked off its hinges. Chickens and floating clumps of feces slowly drained out. We attempted to steer our boat as close as possible into this doorway and get our cameras inside, but it was pitch black inside the barn and the smell was so overpowering I worried I would faint and fall into the disease-ridden water.
Boat navigates through empty, flooded turkey barn. North Carolina, USA.
We Animals Hurricane Florence coverage in the media:
Eco Watch – Coal Ash Was A Disaster in North Carolina Before Hurricane Florence – And Now It’s Even Worse
The Guardian – Millions of dead chickens and pigs found in hurricane floods
Compassion in World Farming – The Hidden Victims of Hurricane Florence
NPR – As Florence Kills Millions Pigs And Millions Of Chickens, We Must ‘Open Our Hearts’
Plant Based News – 3.4 Million Dead In Hurricane Florence: ‘Farm Animals Are Disposable’
PETA – 13 Grim Photos Reveal the Tragedy of Animals Abandoned in Hurricane Florence
Feature Shoot – STIRRING PHOTOS OF ANIMALS IN THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE FLORENCE
After getting what footage we could, we couldn’t bear to stay any longer; we decided to use whatever daylight we had left to find animals for whom help was not coming too late.
Meanwhile, the first of Jo’s aerial images were making their way into the media, sparking conversations about factory farming while all eyes were on North Carolina. New photos made space for new perspectives on the disaster; articles which would once have reported how much money or “units” of property lost by farmers were now phrasing the losses as “5,500 pigs” and “3.4 million chickens” dying in the floods. Visuals of decimated manure lagoons allowed publications to include a reference to the long-standing debate over the contamination risks of CAFOs, even in normal weather. Comments were appearing under these articles, asking questions like “why didn’t the farmers get these animals out?” and transformed into public dialogue over the massive size of factory farming and the impossibility of their rescue or even basic humane treatment. Animal perspectives were breaking free from the small activist pockets; increasingly, larger publications were sensing the scale of the story.
Photo: Kelly Guerin
It was nearing golden hour as our boat was sped further into the flood zone. The past few hours had taken us deep into the worst of the damage, through neighbourhoods where every home was submerged to its roof, past a giant farmhouse with horses huddled together on a front porch, and through an empty, cavernous turkey barn. Caroline and Daniel had been hearing rumors there was a pig farm upstream that had been hit badly by the hurricane and asked Shane if he could get us there before the sun went down. He navigated our small boat through a maze of trees and branches until we were traveling up a wide riverbed. When our path was blocked by a highway bridge, Caroline was determined to find a way around it, jumping out as we pulled the boat off to a side embankment. Soon, we heard her shout from the other side of the bridge, “pigs!”
Before long, the story of the activists stranded on a bridge with 10 surviving pigs was going viral. Daniel and I set ourselves on a schedule to do a headcount of the pigs and a livestream every two hours. A few dozen people grew to hundreds tuning into these updates, even at 2:00 a.m. in the morning. By the time the rescue efforts were called off until daylight at about 3:30 a.m., a community had formed around us and around these miracle pigs. Activists were contacting rescues, eventually finding permanent sanctuary homes for all ten of them. These updates added colour to an otherwise unknown future for these animals and we started to allow ourselves to imagine a happy ending to this story. We began to think about naming them.
Then another thump and groan would come from under the bridge, and I’d immediately snap back to our precarious reality. Nothing was certain and we still had such a long way to go.
Before long, the story of the activists stranded on a bridge with 10 surviving pigs was going viral. Daniel and I set ourselves on a schedule to do a headcount of the pigs and a livestream every two hours. A few dozen people grew to hundreds tuning into these updates, even at 2:00 a.m. in the morning. By the time the rescue efforts were called off until daylight at about 3:30 a.m., a community had formed around us and around these miracle pigs. Activists were contacting rescues, eventually finding permanent sanctuary homes for all ten of them. These updates added colour to an otherwise unknown future for these animals and we started to allow ourselves to imagine a happy ending to this story. We began to think about naming them.
Then another thump and groan would come from under the bridge, and I’d immediately snap back to our precarious reality. Nothing was certain and we still had such a long way to go.
Before long, the story of the activists stranded on a bridge with 10 surviving pigs was going viral. Daniel and I set ourselves on a schedule to do a headcount of the pigs and a livestream every two hours. A few dozen people grew to hundreds tuning into these updates, even at 2:00 a.m. in the morning. By the time the rescue efforts were called off until daylight at about 3:30 a.m., a community had formed around us and around these miracle pigs. Activists were contacting rescues, eventually finding permanent sanctuary homes for all ten of them. These updates added colour to an otherwise unknown future for these animals and we started to allow ourselves to imagine a happy ending to this story. We began to think about naming them.
Then another thump and groan would come from under the bridge, and I’d immediately snap back to our precarious reality. Nothing was certain and we still had such a long way to go.
Kelly Guerin on the bridge where she and Daniel spent the night. North Carolina, USA. Photo: Daniel Turbert
I breathed easier watching the sky begin to brighten just after 5:00 a.m. The mosquitos began to fade back into the damp and were replaced with the chirping of birds. Daniel and I got up off the grooved highway pavement and set out to opposite ends of the bridge for our first real look at some of these pigs since dusk the night before. I took some photos and video in the golden light and marvelled at how strangely serene the whole scene looked. If not for the flooded highway guard rails at the edges of the frame, the images almost looked like pigs gently sleeping together at a farm sanctuary.
As the pigs began to stir, one remained alone and shivering on the embankment. When she initially spotted me watching her, tried to get up, startled, but failed and collapsed back in the grass, still shivering. I wished more than anything for a blanket to put over her. Unable to comfort her, I went back to our pile of camera equipment and grabbed the last unopened bag of dried beans and inched close enough to sprinkle some salted beans close to this her nose. Her eyes fluttered open, she stretched her neck and I watched her eat for the first time in four days. When she finished, she lay back down in the grass and closed her eyes, no longer shaking, As the sun warmed her, I allowed myself to believe that the worst might be over. Perhaps, in some way, this hurricane could be the best thing that would ever happen to her.
That morning, Jo set out on boats with a team from Brother Wolf animal rescue to document CAFOs on the ground, capturing what would become iconic photos of chicken bodies washing up in neighbourhoods and surviving cows seeking refuge on front porches. The juxtaposition of farmed animals on top of residential homes amounted to rare moments that made visible how close these two worlds really existed and how destructive this relationship would continue to be in this era of climate change. Suddenly, the overwhelming death toll of farmed animals had a face.
Meanwhile, I was still stranded on pig island, scattering handfuls of dried edamame beans to a growing hoard of hungry, oinking pigs who had begun to follow me from one end of the bridge to the other. Our exhaustion turned into elation when we saw a truck and trailer come around the highway bend through feet of floodwater. Caroline had returned, along with co-founder of Ziggy’s Refuge Farm Sanctuary, Jay Yontz, and two rescuers from Brother Wolf. It felt like a miracle to be joined by the few people in the state who had the capacity, or the will, to rescue large farm animals. Few such attempts had been documented in Florence’s aftermath and I was grateful to be there with my camera.
As I’ve had to do many times before and will do many times again, I whispered to the animals, “I’m so sorry,” and left them behind.
Bottom Left: Manure being spryed on adjacent field
Bottom Right: Kelly Guerin conductiong an interview with Elsie Herring
View Elsie’s interview with We Animals.
Below: Patrick Connell, a member of Waterkeeper Alliance, checks for contaminants in a river affected by Hurricane Florence. North Carolina, USA.
As we were capturing images of the dead fish, we were joined by Roxanne, a local animal activist. She ushered us to one enclave of the pond where there was a large concrete overflow pipe trickling the smallest amount of clear water into the brown sludge and massive cluster of rotting fish bodies. In front of this pipe opening were the last surviving fish in the lake, straining lethargically against the slight current of oxygen. If these were other animals, we could have pulled them out. But because they were fish, we watched helplessly. Every so often, a fish would give up the struggle, stop swimming, and succumb backwards into the pile of floating bodies.
Story and video by Kelly Guerin. All images by Jo-Anne McArthur except where noted.