SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Volunteers with a Bay Area animal rescue organization are helping to find lost and abandoned pets and missing people in war-ravaged Ukraine using hi-tech drones.
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The drones fly over bombed-out buildings outside of Kyiv, using infrared cameras which can detect the heat signatures of people and pets.
"See as the heat signature of animals with their body heat and then I switch over to 180-time zoom lens and can literally see the whiskers on a cat," Doug Thron with Assert Drone Animal Rescue told KCBS Radio.
Thron explained that once animals are found they use the GPS coordinates and go rescue animals and people. He said they've found around 30 cats and dogs so far and the animals are sent to shelters in hopes they'll be returned to their owners.
Sadly, he said many of the owners are either dead or have fled the area but his love for people and pets is what keeps him going.
"Because a lot of times when people have lost everything this might be the only thing they have left," Thorn added. "Yeah so, if you can bring that cat or dog back to them that means the world to them."
Thron is planning to launch another rescue effort in the coming weeks and hopes to find three times as many animals.
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