Weeks after Ian, hard-hit Floridians still searching for lost pets
FORT MYERS BEACH, Florida: As the water from Hurricane Ian’s storm surge rose, Joseph Salvaggio climbed into his a ic and huddled with his two cats. They stayed there for 20 hours, Mi ens and Zoey keeping their owner warm as he waited for someone to rescue them.
“We were trapped in the a ic with no place to go,” Salvaggio, 83, said. “They laid there very quietly. They were very, very good.”
When rescue workers helped him out of his wrecked home the next day in Fort Myers Beach - one of the hardest hit parts of Southwest Florida - Salvaggio gently dropped the cats down. Indoor cats spooked by the storm and the strangers, they darted through the opening le where the front door had been torn off its hinges.
Salvaggio lost many precious belongings, including the urn holding the ashes of his wife of 43 years, Arlene, who died in 2021. But losing his cats, cherished pets that he and his wife had raised, was unbearable.
“They’re my family,” he said. Hurricane Ian killed more than 100 people in Florida. It also resulted in scores of animal deaths and le many others missing. Three weeks a er Ian made landfall, animal rescue workers are still finding pets that disappeared during the storm and trying to connect them to their owners. The rescuers say the same factors that led to human deaths late warnings, reluctance to evacuate, immense storm surge - likely caused hundreds of pets to perish as well.
“We have a situation where there’s so much devastation and loss, because people didn’t think it was going to hit here, so they stayed,” said Lawrence Garcia, the medical director of the Veterinary Emergency Treatment Service team at the University of Florida. “It could be they couldn’t get out in time, or they lacked resources to evacuate. What we see is many people will take care of their animals before themselves. Their pet is a family member.”
It’s not just family pets that were impacted. Hundreds of large farm animals were killed from high winds and floods that tore through agricultural fields. Over 200 cows perished at the Dakin Dairy Farm in Myakka City, Fla. A preliminary assessment by researchers at the University of Florida estimates up to $222 million in losses of “animals and animal products,” which includes everything from honey and eggs to fish and horses.
Many of those animals that survived are now contending with unexpected side effects like skin irritations and parasitic infections brought on by stress and exposure to contaminated water. With many veterinary offices closed or destroyed, owners are turning to emergency mobile units for help. University of Florida vets say they treated more than 400 pets, including cats, dogs, goats, pigs and bearded dragons, from a parking lot in the days a er Ian. “As stressful as it us for us to go through a hurricane,” Garcia said, “it can be even more stressful for them.”
Among those seeking help on a recent a ernoon was Nancy Sanders, who stayed in her Fort Myers condominium with her husband and their 11year-old dog, Deeno, during the storm. They put up shu ers and hunkered down as the wind and rain ravaged their community. The trio survived but soon a er, Deeno began scratching and biting his fur.
Their regular vet’s office was severely damaged. So they turned to Garcia’s team, which gave the dog a shot to help with the itchiness. Not long a er, he was on the mend.
“Deeno is doing great,” Sanders said. “His sores have mostly healed.”
The University of Florida team has seen a gamut of animal ailments in Ian’s a ermath. Cats have arrived with eyes so badly injured by debris they had to be removed. A pet goat named Archie was brought in a er his owner noticed the animal’s gums had turned white - the product of a parasitic infection. Garcia’s team gave him a blood transfusion.
“They said we got him here just in time,” Alanah Engh, Archie’s owner, said.
Engh lives more than 15 miles inland, but Hurricane Ian dropped so much rain that rivers, streams and ponds overflowed and flooded her property for days a erward.
“The water got so high, it was up to the chest of one of our horses,” Engh said. “She saved her baby’s life. She was holding her foal up with her mouth, keeping it from drowning. I think we saw some miracles with these animals.”
Many pet owners are traumatized by what they endured alongside their animals. Sco Dotson weathered the storm with a neighbor and his 13-year-old German shepherd, Geronimo, from his home on San Carlos Island. As the winds grew stronger, water began seeping inside. He struggled to hold the 120-pound dog above the rising tide.
“I’m sorry buddy, I’m so sorry I got you into this,” Dotson told the dog he’d go en as a puppy. — The Washington Post