911 Dispatcher Catches Hell After Downplaying Floods That Killed 10 Dogs
‘EXTREMELY ANGRY’
When six feet of water poured into a Washington D.C. doggy daycare last week during flash flooding, the canines and their caretakers were trapped in the building. Ten of the pups perished in the horrific tragedy, and their owners are livid after they say the 911 dispatcher downplayed their calls for help. One dispatcher misidentified it as a “water leak,” local station WJLA reported, which presumably doesn’t call for the urgency that a six-foot flood would require. As a result, it took about 20 minutes for first responders to arrive. One grieving owner, Colleen Costello, lost her one-and-a-half-year-old German shepherd mix named Maple. She told CNN that she was “extremely frustrated and extremely angry” with how the calls were “deprioritized.” “I don’t feel safe knowing that calls could be misclassified like this or deprioritized and I might not get the help that I or my family needs,” she said.