WASHINGTON — D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser met Thursday with families who lost their pets when an animal daycare flooded in Northeast D.C.
It's been two weeks since 10 dogs died in flash flooding at the business on Rhode Island Avenue. The families want answers about what happened.
First responders rescued many dogs from floodwaters that day, but 10 families were not so lucky. They want to know why there was no plan in place for an emergency like this one. Rhode Island Avenue is prone to flash flooding, and we know it took emergency crews 23 minutes to get to District Dogs after the first call was made.
Owners are upset their dogs were caged and never given a chance to make it out alive.
One of the dogs who was killed, was Zeni, a 2-year-old Corgi. Her parents, Luer Yin and Connor McCarty told WUSA9 they moved to the area about six months ago and had only left Zeni at District Dogs a few times.
"She was in a crate on the flood, locked up. She didn't have a chance. If he had just not locked her up, Zeni would have paddled out there and saved herself," Yin said. "Why would the instinct or protocol be to cage the dogs? Why would you not evacuate the building?"
Yin and other pet owners sent a letter to the mayor last week, asking for the meeting. They got that opportunity.
The day of the flood, the D.C. Office of Unified Communication (OUC) mislabeled the call as a leak and did not convey to first responders that a wall had collapsed and people and dogs were trapped.
ANC Commissioner Colleen Costello, who lost her dog, said they had a productive conversation Thursday.
"We had a lot of requests that we made of the mayor and her team. And personally I got the sense that she is taking our requests and our concerns very seriously, and they’ve already started working on some of the issues that we identified as requiring remediation," Costello said. "I would have preferred to see a much stronger response with respect to OUC and making sure that the errors that a lot of people have been flagging for a long time get remedied. I did not walk away personally with the impression that that was a big problem on their radar screen. I hope I’m wrong, and I hope I just misread their responses. We’ll see."
Another dog who was lost was named Pepper. Her owners were at the meeting on Thursday. They said they just hoped this wouldn't be allowed to happen to anyone else.
They added that they, and Pepper, even met Bowser last year.
"The mayor had met our pet when she was campaigning last year," one of Pepper's owners said. "She came to our door and met Pepper. We made sure that was clear too that she looked us in the eye and promised safety was a priority when she was campaigning and met our dog."