When America’s Midwest started to suffer from unexpected, catastrophic flooding this spring, headlines about destroyed homes and stranded citizens dominated the news circuit for weeks on end.
In the state of Oklahoma, though, the majority of the land is used for farming and ranching. So while homes were at risk for destruction, there were also hundreds of animals that were at risk of losing their lives.
In 2017, the surprise heroes of Hurricane Harvey were the Louisiana boat owners who drove in to help rescue stranded homeowners unable to get off their roofs. But for these 2019 Oklahoma floods, the unexpected good Samaritans were a group of cowboys who rode in to rescue the animals who had nowhere else to go.
“When we realized how bad this flooding was getting, and knowing many people didn’t have the means to get the help they needed to get animals out, we made a Facebook post and offered to help free of charge,” Cory Conley, 31, from Catoosa, explained in his interview with Fox. “This is the heartbeat of America. We weren’t going to sit back and do nothing.”
All in all, the four worked together with a handful of other volunteers to slowly but safely herd hundreds of animals to higher ground, even returning to some areas more than once to make sure that they could get to every animal possible and relocate them to a safer place. They were cited as completing 15 “urgent missions” to move the animals to higher ground, including one instance where the 24-year-old Webster had to move the same group of livestock from their initially safe relocated spot to an even higher elevation point.
The waters have finally started to recede in the last week, so the farmers and homeowners who were displaced are going to be able to start assessing their damage and rebuilding their lives as the summer progresses.
It’s going to be costly and heartbreaking for many, as entire homes have been destroyed. Estimates put over 600 Oklahoma buildings in a list that have been badly damaged by the storms, both from tornadoes that have spun through the region and from floodwaters that sat stagnant in homes for up to days at a time. There are entire communities that are going to have to start from scratch, and it’s going to take years before everything can go back to normal.
Despite that bleak outlook, though, there’s definitely a bright spot when looking at the number of animals that avoided peril thanks to the selfless acts of the cowboys who rode in on horseback to rescue them. From cattle that had to be roped from the back of boats—something the men had never had to do before—to helpless cats that were left stranded, there’s a whole generation of Oklahoma animals that will get to live another day thanks to their heroic behavior.
