As dozens of people in east Saint John were forced to evacuate due to a butane leak, 62 animals at the Saint John SPCA Animal Rescue had to stay behind.
Shelter manager Joan Richardson tells us the organization has an emergency management plan in place for situations like this.
“The plan is to be able to relocate the shelter,” says Richardson, “so that would be working with EMO to find whether it be a warehouse or an empty building in which we could move all of our animals to that location.”
But Richardson says they couldn’t make it work because they only had five minutes to evacuate.
She says staff have been allowed to return to the shelter twice a day to care for the animals, which are coping quite well given the situation.
#SJEMO UPDATE – Caring for pets and animals at the SPCA has been a priority during the evacuation on the City’s east side. pic.twitter.com/iFp5kxOydA
— City of Saint John (@cityofsaintjohn) January 10, 2018
Richardson says there’s been a lot of misinformation floating around ever since the evacuation.
“We didn’t abandon the animals, we were given no time,” she says. “This was not the ideal scenario to play out for us, but thankfully we’ve been allowed in to care for them … all things considered, the animals are doing well.”
Richardson says they’ll likely have to stay closed an extra day once the evacuation order is lifted to catch up on laundry, dishes and cleaning.
