In the story of “Noah’s Ark except it’s a school bus,” The Washington Post detailed how a truck driver saved more than 60 animals from Hurricane Florence and drove them to Alabama.
The man who rescued the animals, Tony Alsup, has been back and forth between the South Carolina coast and Alabama in the last week, shuttling 53 dogs and 11 cats to safety from endangered animal shelters.
Running on very little sleep and fueled by Waffle House pitstops, the 51-year-old trucker from Tennessee is being hailed as a savior for the otherwise defenseless animals, many of whom would have been put down by the shelters facing the then-approaching hurricane. Now, in the aftermath of Florence, he continues to search for pets in need of rescuing.
“I’m like, look, these are lives too,” Alsup told The Washington Post during a Waffle House stop.
He continued, “Animals — especially shelter pets — they always have to take the back seat of the bus. But I’ll give them their own bus. If I have to I’ll pay for all the fuel, or even a boat, to get these dogs out of there.”
Alsup, who wants to open his own animal shelter one day, has been rescuing shelter pets from floodwaters with his bus since Hurricane Harvey ravaged the Texas coast in 2017. When he saw on the news how so many animal shelters had become overcrowded with lost or rescued animals, Alsup figured he could help by transporting animals to vacant shelters.
Yet, he knew he could not put them in a semitrailer.
“I thought, well what can I do?” Alsup explained. “I’ll just go buy a bus.”
Since then, he has helped with rescue efforts during hurricanes Irma and Maria and, now, Florence.
Once Alsup loads the animals in his bus, he drives them to Foley in Baldwin County. There, his friend, Angela Eib-Maddux, has opened her privately run dog shelter to the new arrivals. She gives them baths and fluffy blankets and “spa treatment,” Alsup said, until they can find enough shelters or foster homes to take the animals.
As of Monday, Alsup had managed to find a permanent home or new shelter for every animal he rescued.
Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
