Getting ready for Hurricane Irma – volunteer transport needed
Irma is going into the record books as a monster storm. Best Friends Animal Society and other national and local animal organizations are working overtime to ensure that she won’t go into the record books for her impact on Florida’s animals.
Before landfall, Best Friends is mobilizing our network of more than 2,000 rescue and shelter partners around the country to secure commitments to take in animals from Florida shelters, and help transport them out of the state within the next two days.
So far, seven of our partners in Florida have asked for assistance with transporting about 1,100 dogs and cats to safety. As of this writing, multiple organizations have committed to moving 350 and that number is growing, but volunteer transport is urgently needed to move multiple animals to receiving shelters in other states.
If you have a vehicle large enough to transport multiple pets and can help, please contact us immediately at bfvolcoord@bestfriends.org. Please put “HURRICANE IRMA TRANSPORT” in the subject line of your email and include the following information:
- How many dogs or cats can you transport?
- How far are you willing to drive outside of Florida?
Minimum age to volunteer for transports is 23 years of age.
We will also be mounting a response to the effects of Irma as soon as we can get boots on the ground, and to maximize our impact, we are partnering with First Coast No More Homeless Pets from Jacksonville under the leadership of their founder, Rick DuCharme.
We won’t know the details of what that response will look like until after Irma has blown through.
More: Best Friends in Atlanta is in the thick of it. They are housing animals who have been evacuated from the Georgia coast, and tomorrow our Atlanta team will dispatch two transport vans to Florida to move shelter pets to safe haven.
Please check back here and on our Facebook page for updates.
