Katrina’s fury has been felt widespread in Louisiana and Mississippi, scattering storms and high winds across hundreds of square miles. Many horse owners are likely stranded in the storm’s wake, says Bonnie Clark, publisher of the Horseman’s Guide of the South Central Region, who is currently stuck at her farm north of Baton Rouge, La. She thinks Katrina’s devastation could rival or even surpass that of Hurricane Andrew, which hit in 1992, and she suggested that horse owners who want to help should hold tight and wait for specially trained rescue teams to perform their duties.

“We took a nice slap in the face,” Clark describes. “Yesterday I was standing in my living room on the phone discussing the storm with someone, and I said, ‘Oh, my God!’ as a tree began to fall on my three horses. Luckily, they saw it and scooted out from underneath the tree as it fell, and they were fine.” In addition to that tree was another that landed on her office, but her family and horses fared well. But Clark is concerned about areas of heavy horse population in Louisiana that might not have been able to evacuate before the storm. She encourages people who know of pockets in Louisiana that weren’t able to evacuate their horses to contact her at bonnie@lahg.net. “That way we’ll know where to look,” when equine rescue efforts begin, she says.

“We don’t have any reports yet, because they’re still trying to find people. I don’t have a report on how the horses did, but there are probably quite a few that were drowned,” she continues. “One of our concerns is the Slidell area–we have a lot of horses over there–and also the Covington area (east of Baton Rouge in the toe of the Louisiana “boot”). Those areas took a lot of wind damage, and they can’t get anybody in there right now, that’s the problem.”

Clark says she’s been able to get limited television reception and saw a report in which a public official reported that during a flyover he saw livestock carcasses floating in flooded areas