Wildfire Pets Arrive In Washington From California

SEATAC, WA - About 60 cats and dogs arrived at Sea-Tac Airport Tuesday night, the first batch of shelter animals made homeless by recent wildfires that are coming to Washington. Seattle Humane is prepared to take up to 300 animals and put them up for adoption.

Shelters in California are scrambling to find homes for animals. Although organizations like Seattle Humane are able to accept them, getting some animals here is a challenge.

"The California shelters are desperate to move large dogs though the airline carrier only has capacity to transport five large crates per flight," Seattle Humane spokeswoman Amanda Anderson said this week.

Seattle Humane staff and volunteers are actually driving down to California to get the bigger dogs. They will pick up the dogs in Yreka, Calif., which is about 20 miles south of the Oregon border, and drive them back to Seattle Humane's shelter in Bellevue.

The shelter needs help to house and pay for the homeless wildfire pets. You can donate money here, and browse the Seattle Humane website for pets here. Seattle Humane is only accepting shelter pets, not pets separated from their owners.

Eighty-one people died in the Camp Fire in Northern California. The wind-whipped wildfire began Nov. 8 off in the Feather River Canyon, according to Cal Fire. The rapidly-spreading blaze ripped through the small town of Paradise and surrounding communities in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Butte County. As of Wednesday, the Camp Fire has scorched 153,336 acres and destroyed more than 18,000 structures, most of them homes.

The Woolsey fire outside Los Angles also began on Nov. 8 and forced almost 300,000 people to evacuate from the Malibu area. That fire was mostly contained as of Wednesday.

Caption: A dog watches from a car as flames approach during the Woolsey Fire on Nov. 9, 2018 in Malibu, Calif. About 75,000 homes were evacuated in Los Angeles and Ventura counties due to two fires in the region.

Photo by David McNew/Getty Images

Patch reporter Kristina Houck contributed to this story