Group helps pets in Oklahoma flooding
Oklahoma’s torrential downpours and subsequent floods have turned into more than last week’s headlines for five members of Spokane-based Humane Evacuation Animal Rescue Team. The group arrived in Miami, Okla., on Thursday sporting latex gloves and homemade cookies on a weeklong mission to assist the region’s ailing animals.
“They were practically fighting with each other over who could go,” said the group’s president, Janis Christensen, about a group of more than 100 volunteers trained in first aid, helicopter safety, and “lots and lots” of animal handling, said Christensen. The group ranges from stay-at-home mothers to firefighters and veterinarians.
Their skills are desperately needed, said Matt Wagner, spokesman for the Denver-based American Humane Association, the organization that asked the rescue team for assistance and helped coordinate a national group of 15 volunteers. “It’s pretty devastating,” he said. “They are pulling dogs and cats off of roofs just like Katrina, and you see livestock up to their heads and necks in water.”
But Spokane group leader Janet Schaffer, 47, affirmed her decision to fly halfway across the country for a week, almost gushing about the makeshift barn shelter they created to house the abundance of stray cats and mangy dogs. “We are all animal lovers,” she said by phone from Miami. “If it were our pets, we would want them to do this for us.”
The Spokane contingent, a conglomeration of middle-age women, including an ophthalmologist’s assistant and a retiree, has taken on the often-vicious process of separating the cats from the dogs, removing the wounded animals to the new temporary shelter and treating injuries.
The entire crew has rescued close to 60 animals since their arrival on Thursday, said Tracy Reis, the American Humane Association’s Animal Emergency Services program manager.
The American Humane Association requested the Spokane group’s assistance when the mayor of Miami, Okla., turned over all animal rescue activities to the national organization. “They are a wonderful group,” Reis said about the Spokane women. “I just can’t say enough about them.”
The team also includes Spokane residents Tami Smith and Donna Breidenbach, Coeur d’Alene resident Barbara Ford, and Cheney resident Tracy Nadeau.
A second group will replace the first one if it continues to storm, but Schaffer said the weather has remained dry for two days.
Back home, Schaffer’s son, Ryan, 11, thinks the trip is a bit long, even for struggling pets. “It’s kind of boring here without her,” he said. “But I think she’s kind of helping animals.”