Local ECCHA efforts help shelter animals impacted by both recent hurricanes

EAU CLAIRE — With Hurricane Helene and Milton passing through the Southeast just in the past month, efforts to help those communities continue as organizations help in their own capacity.

Those efforts extend locally, with organizations like the three crew members from Eau Claire Energy Cooperative joining a Wisconsin team heading for South Carolina following Hurricane Helene, featured in Oct. 7's edition of Leader-Telegram. As another local effort, Eau Claire Community Humane Association took on animals at their shelter in the aftermath of both hurricanes.

For their first wave back in early October, Addie Erdmann, marketing and development director, said, "We took in initially six dogs out of, I believe, 125 that were flown into the Midwest... We are and continue to be extremely full of dogs and cats, but when a call like that comes, I feel like we have to answer. We're not going to not help; we are going to figure it out."

Following the aftermath of Hurricane Milton last week, Erdmann said they decided to take a run of 7 animals into their shelter to help Southeastern efforts, this time including both cats and dogs. The animals arrived over the weekend as volunteers headed to Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport in Wisconsin.

These efforts became possible through Greater Good Charities, in partnership with Southwest Airlines and Lucky Dog Animal Rescue, who delivered humanitarian supplies to North Carolina and utilized a donated Southwest aircraft to airlift shelter pets, roughly 270 in total, to the Midwest.

"All of the dogs that came up from those affected areas were animals that were already in shelter systems, and I know that was a concern of a lot of people when they saw the news that we were taking in the displaced animals," said Erdmann. "The shelters there wanted to clear their shelters out because they knew they would be getting an influx of displaced animals, so they wanted a 'clean slate' before the hurricanes hit."

In taking both dogs and cats into their shelter for the second run, Erdmann said they knew that their space for dogs was limited but saw availability in the cat area of the shelter.

"We wanted to still be able to help as much as we could with still maintaining our standards of care here," she said.

This effort to take in animals in the wake of the hurricanes also comes less than a year after ECCHA celebrated moving into their new facility. Erdmann said that, now with the experience of the transfers following the disaster relief and the help of volunteers, "we are prepared more than ever to jump in whenever they need us."

"Our whole mission is to be the voice for things that can't speak for themselves," she said. "Of course we do that locally already, but to have an impact on a national level when there is so much uncertainty going on I think is huge and speaks volumes. We care about every animal that comes through our doors no matter the situation, but we have a very soft spot in our hearts for the transfers especially."