Moving Larger Animals Proves Difficult But Doable In Evacuation Situations

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FLORIDA CITY (CBSMiami) -- While residents are busy getting to shelters or taking their pets to kennels, we tend to forget about what happens to larger animals.

Key Largo resident Karen Flynn took it upon herself to help get 39 horses out of Hurricane Irma's path.

"We had 20 that left on Wednesday night. We wanted to ship them in the night because it's a little cooler," she said. "Now they're in Tryon, North Carolina, hoping that nothing goes there. And then we shipped about 18 today. A couple of my friends had some horses that we shipped out to Tropical Park. And then about five older ones that we can't ship, so they can't move, so they're gonna stay at the farm."

Tropical Park, she told CBS4's David Sutta, acts as a shelter for horses.

"After Hurricane Andrew, it was a triage place," Flynn continued. "If you had horses that were hurt or if they were loose. We went about getting a lot of loose horses after Hurricane Andrew and evacuating them from the places they were at and putting them in Tropical Park."

She shared video of the transportation earlier on Friday.

Flynn suggested horses shouldn't be forced to face the weather.

"I actually worked for HART, which was the Hurricane Andrew Relief Team for the horses," she said. "And one of them we had to rescue and something had gone into its chest. And it was not a great sight. Sometimes when they're out in the elements like that, I mean, things that fly around, the debris, whatever, it can just cut them. You could see one side of its chest from the other side, it was pretty traumatic."

That horse survived and was later treated by vets. Flynn said she's relieved to know that the horses she transported this week are safe and in good weather.