“It was definitely all-hands-on-deck,” Best Friends Animal Society’s Sophia Proler tells PEOPLE exclusively
NEED TO KNOW
- An emergency flight rescued 88 shelter pets from Texas floods and transported them to Utah for adoption
- The effort freed up space in Texas shelters for pets displaced by the flooding
- Best Friends Animal Society urges pet owners to prepare for disasters with microchips, ID tags and emergency supplies, including a pet go-bag
It took less than a day to get 88 shelter pets onto a plane and out of harm’s way.
On the morning of Friday, July 17, 42 cats and 46 dogs boarded an emergency rescue flight out of San Marcos, Texas, bound for Best Friends Animal Society’s Pet Adoption Center in Salt Lake City. The airlift was a joint effort by Best Friends, Austin Pets Alive!, Footbridge Foundation and Wings of Rescue, and it came one day after significant rain and river flooding hit Central Texas, almost exactly a year after catastrophic floods devastated the same stretch of Hill Country.
“It was definitely all-hands-on-deck,” Sophia Proler, south central region director for Best Friends Animal Society, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. Within 22 hours of recognizing the gravity of the situation, she says, the organization and its partners had secured a flight to carry the animals to Utah.
Crucially, none of the pets on board had been separated from their families by floodwaters. Every one had been waiting for adoption in a Texas shelter before the water rose, and moving them out created room for the lost and displaced animals arriving in their place…