BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – An animal clinic with ties to Western New York is asking the City of Good Neighbors for help as they rebuild. West Maui Animal Clinic burned to the ground during the wildfires.

The staff at the animal clinic are shocked and saddened by the destruction these wildfires have caused. They are still trying to process how their one location is now gone.

“Everything is gone, people had to flee on foot, to get a way from the flames, and leave their cars and their pets and leave everything behind,” said Aleix Allan Humphries, a vet tech at the clinic’s central location.

Humphries’ coworker, Dr. Anna Pleto, is from Western New York. Her aunt posted on Facebook that Pleto was home visiting family for a couple weeks and returned to Maui moments before the fire started.

It didn’t take long for the fire to rip through the West Maui Animal Clinic. The clinic’s central location is currently caring for cats and dogs who were burned, as well as animals that inhaled smoke.

“The clinic currently here, we’re trying to support people who have lost everything as best we can, we have burn victim cats and dogs, we have smoke inhalation animals,” Pleto said. “It’s just amazing, the amount of damage that was truly done to our beautiful island.”

Humphries says so many people on the island lost everything.

“Lahaina was a historical place, in the Hawaiian culture, and used to be the capital of Hawaii, and it’s now gone,” Humphries said. “It’s going to take years and years and years to rebuild and it’s going to take years of time for people who saw some of these horrible things to recover from that mentally.”

The animal clinic and its employees are raising money for recovery efforts, and you can make a donation here.

Matt Covert from AAA in Orchard Park says the company is currently helping several of their travelers from WNY who are stuck on Maui. He says they are safe, and they are working on getting them on flights to return back here in Buffalo.