COBB COUNTY, Ga. — Rescuers are helping get stranded dogs to safety in Texas.
Channel 2’s Ross Cavitt spoke with a man who carried a dog through flooded streets to a waiting boat.
"We saw Katrina on TV and loaded up my truck and had to go down and help," said Ron Presley.
Presley, a Marietta firefighter with swift water rescue training, became a valuable rescuer in Katrina's hurricane zones but his focus was not necessarily on the people but their pets.
"They were just being left behind and that was I guess the first really big flood a pet disaster where there was an outcry that animals were being left behind," he said.
A group called Kinship Circle recruited Presley after Katrina and his Harvey trip will be his 13th rescue mission
He's rescued animals in Japan's tsunami zone, after the earthquake in Chile and devastating floods in Thailand often finding abandoned dogs, but mostly carrying out rescue missions by request.
"We get a lot of requests by people who had to leave their animals behind they couldn't wade through the water for whatever reasons and carry their animals or take their animals or had too many so they put in a request can someone break into my house and feed my animals or get my animals," he explained.
Presley says he's been bitten more times than he can remember, and besides dogs has rescued everything from cats to snakes.
A rewarding enough mission to compel him to go again.
"You would think it was your own dog as appreciative as they are when you show up and most of them, a lot of them they don't care about the food when you go into a house and set them free they just want some attention," he said.
Cox Media Group
