About 100 animals were flown from Puerto Rico to Raleigh-Durham International Airport, where they were divided up among various rescue groups to be taken to their respective shelters to find new homes on Thursday.
This effort, organized by the Humane Society of the United States, comes in the aftermath of a hurricane season that caused large destruction across the Caribbean and states bordering the Gulf of Mexico — including Puerto Rico.
Gavin Smith, a research professor at UNC and director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Coastal Resilience Center of Excellence, said the big challenge in Puerto Rico is going to be repairing and rebuilding their infrastructure.
“It was already dated, and the repairing of major damages sustained to the island’s infrastructure is going to be a monumental task,” he said.
Smith said Puerto Rico's circumstances mark a unique state for relief efforts.
“These are issues that are not necessarily germane just to Puerto Rico, but I think Puerto Rico is unique because of the confluence of the level of damages, their compromised infrastructure, their current economic standing and their isolation,” he said. “These are all major issues that they’re dealing with.”
One way of working though this is bringing animals from shelters in Puerto Rico to North Carolina, where organizations are receiving, feeding and sheltering them.
Erica Geppi, North Carolina state director with the Humane Society of the United States, said her organization is taking animals that don't already have owners and moving them to North Carolina to put them up for adoption, so pet shelters in Puerto Rico can focus on reuniting pets with their owners.
“Helping the people and the animals be reunited and helping those that are adoptable find loving homes is our goal,” she said.
