On December 28th, 2019, a series of small earthquakes began rattling Puerto Rico on a daily basis. This shaking has not stopped. In the first six months of 2020, the island recorded almost 10,000 tremors, including a 6.4 magnitude earthquake — the largest earthquake to shake Puerto Rico in more than 100 years. 

The constant shaking caused devastating damage and displaced thousands of people, especially in the southeastern corner of the island. Because of this crisis, dogs and cats started flooding into already severely overburdened animal shelters (Puerto Rico’s municipal shelter system maintains a combined 94-96% euthanasia rate). Every animal shelter across the island is severely overburdened, but the earthquakes pushed the shelters in the south to their absolute limits. With more and more families surrendering their pets, the heartbreaking reality of these shelters only became more dire.

As soon as we found out that so many family pets were being euthanized due to lack of space, The Sato Project sprang into action. We immediately mobilized our energy and resources to save as many lives as possible. From January 19th to February 9th, 2020 our team, along with our partners:

  • Evacuated more than 250 dogs and cats from overburdened and damaged shelters near the epicenter of the earthquake crisis. 

  • Completed two Freedom Flights in only three weeks, the first of which took off only five days after the biggest earthquake in 100 years shook Puerto Rico. Both airplanes flew more than 100 shelter animals from Puerto Rico to new lives on the East Coast. 

  • Distributed animal relief supplies and food to shelters in need. 

  • Reopened our ‘No Dog Left Behind’ program to help families in crisis stay together with their beloved pets.

By evacuating animals from overcrowded shelters in Puerto Rico to organizations on the East Coast, not only did we save the lives of these 250+ dogs and cats, but we also simultaneously provided much-needed space for the additional animals who poured in to the shelters afterwards as the earthquakes continued. 

These immediate relief efforts would not have been possible without our incredible Freedom Flight partners Wings of Rescue and GreaterGood.org, as well as our shelter partners on the mainland who stepped up to take in our sato and gato survivors: Humane Society of Broward County (FL), Brandywine Valley SPCA (DE/PA), St. Hubert's Animal Welfare Center (NJ), Bideawee (NY), and Animal Refuge League of Greater Portland (ME). 

As the earthquakes continue, our efforts to relieve impacted shelters have since become an ongoing part of our rescue efforts. Since the earthquakes began, our team has evacuated over 600 dogs from overburdened shelters in the southeastern corner.

You can see more news coverage of our earthquake relief efforts on our Press Page.