SANTA ROSA (KRON) — With more people returning to their once-evacuated neighborhoods in Santa Rosa, they’re finding more animals that got separated from their owners during the North Bay Firestorm.
Several North Bay shelters and online Good Samaritans are trying to reunite those people with their pets.
KRON4 noticed tons of posts on social media Monday about lost or found pets.
Reporter Spencer Blake spoke to a woman who organized a lost-and-found pet group, and she says she’s seen a tremendous amount of success.
Kristina Derkos says her organization has been a part of at least 10 pet-person reunions.
Cross-postings on various social media also encourage people to bring found animals to shelters.
Sonoma County Animal Services Director John Skeel says the shelter has been doing everything it can to help the searches but asks for help from people who find animals.
“We actually encourage people, if they’ve lost an animal, to do all they can to try and find it themselves,” Skeel said. “But once they’ve found it, it really will be helpful if they come to our website, make us aware of it so we can upload the image of the lost animal, put all the data in, and have a centralized location for people to look.”
In other words, officials say don’t just post on social media and hang onto the animal because it makes it harder for owners to find them.
A centralized site, Pet Harbor, is updated hourly.
Shelters in the area have nightly phone calls with each other to share data.
So far, 60 animals have reunited with owners from the Santa Rosa location.WHAT OTHERS ARE CLICKING ON:
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