Maui's animal shelters shipped more than 100 pets to Oregon to make room for animals injured in the wildfires
- More than 130 shelter animals arrived in Oregon from Maui after devastating wildfires.
- The pets reportedly rode in the main cabin of a Southwest Airlines flight.
More than 130 pets arrived in Portland, Oregon, on Friday from animal shelters in Maui after wildfires devastated Hawaii.
The pets arrived on a Southwest Airlines flight, where they rode in the main cabin, the local ABC affiliate KATU reported.
The Oregon Humane Society is hosting the pets while they are in the state. The 103 cats and 33 dogs were being housed in shelters in Hawaii and were looking for homes when the fires started earlier this month. At least 93 people have been confirmed dead due to the fires that ripped across Maui and the Big Island, causing some people to run into the water for safety.
Jenny Miller, a representative of the Maui Humane Society, told Fox affiliate KPTV that shelters in Maui were already crowded before the fires started. Now, the shelters need to free up space for a potential influx in animals that were lost or injured in the wildfires.
"When we don't have any more room, that's it," Miller told KTPV. '"We're the only shelter on the island."
Some animal shelters in Maui were already housing two dogs per kennel before the fires, the outlet reported.
Noah Horton, CEO of Greater Good Charities which helped bring the animals to Oregon, said the shelter bets are "highly adoptable" because they had already been in a shelter prior to the tragedy, KPTV reported.
"By moving them somewhere they'll be quickly placed and adopted, we're creating space to accept an influx of pets,"" Horton told the outlet.
Allocating some of Maui's shelter animals to Oregon will help rescuers free up resources to find missing pets in the aftermath of the fires, KATU reported.