CHICAGO — As the recovery and rebuilding efforts continue in Maui, there’s a need that is developing to help animals who now have no home.

For now, an animal shelter in San Diego is taking animals from shelters on Maui that are now inundated with pets displaced because of the wildfires.

“Now more than ever, it’s extremely crucial because the people in Maui lost their homes and they are having to rebuild from scratch,” Jessica Gercek with the Helen Woodward Center said. “And they don’t have any place to put their pets and their animals. So they are looking towards the shelters.”

It’s something PAWS Chicago does on a regular basis. They bring homeless pets from other shelters in areas hit by natural disasters in order to make room for those pets, whose owners don’t have a place for them to stay.

Just like many people who survived the Maui fires and are living in temporary housing, most of the pets who survived need that temporary housing as well.

“These are animals that if they need to help people and get their pets into a shelter, these orphaned animals that have never had a home maybe would be the first to be they would have to consider euthanizing,” Gercke said. “So they’ll reach out to us in a desperate plea because they want these animals to find their forever homes.”