Charlotte County wildlife sanctuary recovering after Hurricane Irma

PUNTA GORDA, Fla.  A popular Southwest Florida wildlife sanctuary lost thousands of pounds of food during Hurricane Irma.

Downed trees can be seen across the Octagon Wildlife Sanctuary at 41660 Horseshoe Road where more than 150 animals live.

“I’ve never seen the sanctuary that devastated by a hurricane,” said owner Lauri Caron.

Caron decided to stay behind to take care of the animals and the 40-year-old facility during the storm on her own.

“Our animals are safe and that’s the main thing,” Caron said.

None of the animals were hurt during the storm, but thousands of dollars of food was lost.

“They require a lot of food and that’s a heavy loss for us, we are having a lot of trouble keeping our food frozen,” Caron said.

The freezer that stores about 30,000 pounds of food is running on a donated generator that isn’t cold enough.

“We’re going to have to buy everything we had to toss or give to hog farmers cause we can’t feed it to our guys,” Caron said.

The wildlife sanctuary hopes to reopen in October.

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