Airport worker responds to animal needs after hurricane
A love for animals spurred Jennifer Nichole into action after Hurricane Florence hit the Pee Dee of South Carolina and eastern North Carolina.
“I’ve been working animal rescue for about three and a half years now. Every time a natural disaster happens we try to get together and help each other out,” she said.
Nichole works at Charleston International Airport as a skycap. She also volunteers with Valiant Animal Rescue and Relief, a Lowcountry nonprofit that rescues abused and neglected animals in the Carolinas.
Before the hurricane hit the coast of North Carolina, Nichole and her fellow rescue volunteers began gathering supplies for the animals displaced from shelters because of storm damage. She called on her fellow airport workers to help with temporary storage and for donations of supplies from medical supplies, kennels, leashes and collars to dog and cat food, water and bedding. The Charleston County Aviation Authority donated blankets and cleaning supplies and provided Nichole with temporary storage space while she collected the animal relief donations.
A few thousand pounds of supplies will be loaded soon into a vehicle and driven to a rural shelter in Wilmington that was flooded as well as locations in need in Marion, Dillon and Sumter in South Carolina.
“I’m not sure I will be able to get all the way into Wilmington and where I need to go,” Nichole said. “We’ve been networking with Cajun Navy since a week prior to the hurricane to prep and be ready. If I cannot drive where I need to go then they will meet me and take the items where it needs to go.”
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