Former Team Voices Remembering Hurricane Katrina
August 4th, 2025
By Sheri Madsen, Director of PR and Partnerships –
As the 20th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, we sat down with two of our former United Animal Nations (UAN, RedRover’s former name) colleagues, Karen Brown and Kelly Siefkin, to get their perspective on this life-changing event from the day UAN mobilized to help families on the Gulf Coast, to the day the last volunteer returned home.
POV: Karen Brown
Q: What was it like the day UAN started to mobilize to support communities in the affected areas?
A: As a program director, I had a sense of relief – we could do what we are here to do. It was exciting to get boots on the ground and make a difference. The people on the ground (evacuees) had a lot to deal with, and didn’t have to worry about their pets once they were in our care, and came for cuddles.
Q: What effect did you see on the UAN team? The organization?
A: After this deployment, we came out of it with big lessons learned. It really changed the way we approached training and got us started in online training, and it really helped once Incident Command System (ICS) training came online (which was very important to us and the volunteers). It made us reflect on who we wanted to be and helped us focus on sheltering. Our goal was to get more volunteers trained through on-site training – everyone showed up back then for in-person training! It also helped us to develop long lasting protocols that are still used to this day, like our morning meetings and debriefs at the end of each deployment day.
POV: Kelly Siefkin
Q: Do you remember receiving the request to help once Hurricane Katrina struck?
A: While I’d been on several deployments, I wasn’t sure what we were getting into. Nothing prepared us for Katrina. We only had 8-10 UAN staff at the time, and the Emergency Animal Rescue Service (EARS program, now called RedRover Responders) was entirely volunteer-driven. These were the days before everything was digitized, so we searched through binders and binders of applications to make phone calls and get volunteers on the ground to help.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to share?
A: The EARS program had a lot of dedicated followers. The passion from the volunteers responding to Hurricane Katrina really catapulted UAN, and showed the power in collaborating between groups. Everyone should be so proud of how far we’ve come when it comes to disaster preparedness, including pets!
