According to the latest Hurricane Katrina disaster update from the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) at 9:00 pm CDT on Aug. 31, four Veterinary Medical Assistance Teams (VMAT) were deployed and awaiting mission assignments for various devastated areas.

The VMAT teams were to begin with “overall assessments of veterinary facilities, animal issues, and public health issues. The main goal will be to coordinate efforts with the veterinary community, state and local authorities, and humane organizations,” said the update. Until assessments are made, it will be difficult to tell how area horses were impacted by Hurricane Katrina, which tore through Louisiana and Mississippi earlier this week.

Here are the locations of the deployed VMAT teams as of last night:

• VMAT-1: Dr. Barry Kellogg is deputy team commander for VMAT and was stationed in Baton Rouge, La., awaiting approval for his 25-member team to move from Dallas/Fort Worth into Louisiana.


• VMAT-2: Twenty-one members arrived in Anniston, Ala., yesterday to await a state mission assignment.


• VMAT-3: Twenty-five members were arriving in Jackson, Miss., with a state mission assignment to do initial assessments.


• VMAT-5, with 25 members deployed, was staged in Dallas/Fort Worth awaiting mission assignment from Louisiana.

In the meantime, the AVMA was keeping a list of veterinarians who wanted to volunteer their services. Since volunteers aren’t part of an existing response team structure, and it is of utmost importance for relief efforts to be organized to minimize casualties, generally the veterinary volunteers cannot be utilized. However, they were asked to send names to clovern@avma.org to be added to a list that is distributed daily to the responding humane organizations, VMATs, and state veterinarians. Any veterinarians interested in joining VMAT are encouraged to visit www.avma.org/disaster for more information