Animal rescue in shock after Hurricane Helene destroys shelter

Communities across the Southeast are still discovering the extent of devastation Hurricane Helene caused as it flooded and battered homes and businesses. We talked to one animal shelter in North Carolina to see how it's recovering.

"It's disorienting to walk down the streets... because you almost don't even know where you are on the roads you've walked every day for over a decade," Leah Craig Chumbley of Brother Wolf Animal Rescue in Asheville saw the worst of the storm.

"It forcefully pushed this giant semi against the bridge so fast, crumbled it like a piece of paper and took it right under. Like the force of what this water did... it just leveled everything." Now she's seeing the worst of what it left behind. When she finally trudged through knee-deep mud to assess the damage at Brother Wolf, she found an upturned train car nearby, piles of rubble, and rooms looking like they'd been poured out of a blender. All she could do is count her blessings that everyone got out in time.

"We acted fast to get our animals out ahead of that storm... if we had not evacuated that shelter, all of our animals would have died... the entire shelter was underwater. Every single asset that this organization has used to save the lives of over 100,000 animals is gone." Now Brother Wolf is looking for foster homes and shelters for its 137 pets. A few of those have already moved to Maryland. Leah says the best way to help is through monetary donations. You can donate here. Another way to help is by adopting or fostering from shelters in our area to make space for animals misplaced by the storm. You can find more information on how to do that on our Pets On Set page.