By AFP - Agence France Presse
Separated by the Los Angeles wildfires, a happy reunion for some pets and their owners
Paula RAMON
When Serena Null saw the flames roaring towards her family's home in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena, she ran to find her pet Domino, but the cat escaped her grasp.
“We could see the fire from the front door, so we didn't have enough time and had to leave him,” said Null, 27.
The ferocious fire reduced her mother-in-law's house to ashes, and a search of the blackened rubble the following day was fruitless. Null feared he would never see his green-eyed friend again.
But on Friday, to her surprise, she and Domino were reunited.
“I was so relieved and so happy that he was here,” a tearful Null told AFP outside the Pasadena Humane NGO, where Domino - with scorched paws, a burnt nose and a high level of stress - was taken after being rescued.
Domino is one of the hundreds of pets taken to the center when the Eaton fire hit Altadena, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes in such a hurry that many left with only their clothes on.
Pasadena Humane was used to dealing with crises, but the sudden explosion in demand was unprecedented.
“We've never had to take in 350 animals at once in one day,” said the center's Kevin McManus. “It's been really overwhelming.”
- Search and rescue -
Many animals were surrendered by their owners, who lost their homes and had to find temporary housing for their pets while they themselves stayed in hotels or shelters.
But others have been brought in by rescue teams and volunteers. The center says on its website that when it receives a report of a pet left behind, it sends “search and rescue teams as quickly as possible to areas that are safe to enter”.
The center opened up as much space as possible to accommodate the influx, even putting some pets in offices.
And it wasn't just cats and dogs, said McManus. There were species rarely seen in an animal shelter - like a pony, which spent a night at the center.
More than 10 days after the fires began ravaging Los Angeles, the center is still home to around 400 animals, including rabbits, turtles, lizards and birds, including a huge green, red and blue macaw.
Many of the pet owners, still without permanent housing, come to the center to visit their animal friends - people like Winston Ekpo, who came to see his three German shepherds, Salt, Pepper and Sugar.
As the firefighters in the area move on, many animal owners are able to come and retrieve their pets, and tears of sadness turn into tears of joy.
- Back home -
The center's website publishes photos of the recovered animals, including information about the time and place where they were rescued.
McManus said that around 250 pets have been returned to their owners so far.
One of them, curiously, was Bombon, who had actually been lost long before the fires.
The chihuahua mix disappeared from his home in Altadena in November, said 23-year-old Erick Rico.
He began to resign himself to never seeing Bombon again.
Then, one day, a friend told him that he had seen a photo on the Pasadena Humane website that caught his eye.
When Rico saw it, he was so excited that he couldn't sleep that night - “it looked exactly like him”, he said - and arrived at the center the next morning.
When he saw his owners, Bombon “started crying a lot, wagging his tail and everything. He was very, very happy”.
After the painful days of uncertainty, Rico also felt relief. “Now I'm just happy that he's back home.”
pr/bbk/bs
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