Dog survives Hurricane Ian after hiding out on top of RV for nine days
A dog survived Hurricane Ian after possibly spending as much as nine days on top of an RV before being rescued by police.
The DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office wrote on Facebook on 6 October that “a concerned DeSoto County resident” had called the previous day “about a dog who was stranded on the roof of an RV”.
“The RV was located in the River Acres community, one of many areas severely impacted by flooding. Thankfully, the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office was able to mobilize the boat and rescue the dog. The dog was turned over to DeSoto County Animal Control where it now has access to water, food, and shelter,” the office said.
Rescue workers were unsure how the dog could have reached such heights as the area was covered in waters reaching chest level, McClatchy News reported.
About twenty inches of rainfall struck Florida as Hurricane Ian made landfall on 28 September, leading to “camping trailers” bobbing up and down “like corks in an oily sea of floodwater,” according to Reuters.
Winds were found to go beyond 140 mph (225 kph) in some parts of the state.
The police call concerning the dog on top of an RV came more than a week later. The RV was still surrounded by black water reaching the knees when law enforcement got to the scene.
The roof of the RV was reached using a ladder and the dog was then carried to a boat. County officials told McClatchy News that other than being thin, the dog was unharmed.
On Tuesday, officials added that the black mouth cur and pitbull mix, aged between three and four, had regained some of his weight.
As no owner has come to pick up the dog, McClatchy News reported that the animal remains at the shelter,
By Wednesday, the Sheriff’s post about the dog rescue has garnered almost 800 reactions and dozens of comments. Some were concerned that the dog’s owner may have been injured or had evacuated and not come back yet.
Other Facebook users said it would be easy to miss a dog taking shelter on top of an RV in the middle of a chaotic situation such as a hurricane.
“He must have been starving,” Dianna Bruso noted.
“Don’t understand how anyone could just up [and] leave [their] dog behind. I would have been on that roof too had it been me,” Chèryl Tyner wrote.
“Such sadness all around. Animals starving, lost, hurt. And the same for so many people,” Myra Cook added.
