PORTLAND – Two Maine game officers and their cadaver dogs cut short their latest search for bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims Thursday because of concerns about the availability of housing and veterinary care.

Warden Wayde Carter and Sgt. Roger Guay were en route home after complaining about a lack of support from Louisiana officials and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A team from Georgia also was returning home, an official said.

Carter and Guay, who spent two weeks in New Orleans in November, returned to take part in the final search for an estimated 2,300 people still unaccounted for. On Sunday, they were credited with finding the body of a 54-year-old man in an abandoned house in the city’s Lakeview neighborhood.

Returning to their downtown hotel Tuesday and looking forward to showers after a full day of poking through debris, the wardens found that their room keys were not working and they were locked out.

“We were filthy,” Guay said via cell phone from Birmingham, Ala. “We’d been in wrecked houses filled with slime, filled with sewage and rats. The rats were taking over the area.”

The two were referred to a FEMA community relations desk, which told them to fill out applications for federal assistance like those given to Katrina evacuees.

Guay, from Greenville, and Carter, from Marshfield, declined to fill out the forms because they were relief workers, not hurricane victims.

The prolonged deadlock ended only after a sympathetic hotel desk clerk allowed the wardens into their rooms. But they were advised that they would have to vacate in 48 hours because the FEMA contract would no longer be effective.

The wardens were also concerned that a Veterinary Medical Assistance Team was unavailable during their latest search and rescue stint. A team that was on call last November proved its worth when Carter’s German shepherd, Buddy, got a sliver of debris in his eye and required emergency surgery.

After consulting with their supervisor in Augusta – Maj. Greg Sanborn – all agreed that the team should head home.

“It’s kind of disappointing to leave a job unfinished,” Guay said, “but it’s also a relief because every day was so stressful because of all the confusion and chaos, and not knowing whether you’d have a place to put your head down at night.”

FEMA said Louisiana officials were responsible for securing lodging and veterinary services for the search teams.

“They apparently just overlooked the fact that the veterinarians and the accommodations had to be written into the contract that the state was undertaking,” said Nicol Andrews, an agency spokeswoman.

FEMA offered early this week to take care of the bill for the search teams while the state was clarifying the contract arrangements, Andrews said, “but for whatever reason, that message never reached the teams.”

Dr. Louis Cataldie, Louisiana’s medical examiner, spent Thursday scrambling to resolve the payment problems and to keep the teams from leaving, said Bob Johannessen, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.

As of Thursday, teams from Maine and Georgia were gone, he said.

“Our agency will pay for this if we have to. It’s too critical to get caught up in a question of who ultimately is going to pay for it,” Johannessen said.

Cataldi has spent months lobbying for a final search of homes in the Lower Ninth Ward, the Ninth Ward and Lakeview. Those homes ultimately will be razed, Johannessen said.

The departure of the Maine and Georgia teams was a disappointment, but the search will resume today with a a dog and handler from Shrevesport, La., Johannessen said. They’ll be reinforced by three dogs and handlers from South Carolina, he said.



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