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Coffeyville Flood Destroys City Animal Shelter
Local volunteers create temporary shelter while flood animals await reclaimation or adoption.
The task before us was daunting as 40 – 60 local volunteers converged on Le Clere Park, the designated temporary shelter for animals displaced by the Coffeyville flood and oil spill of 2007. We built this first temporary shelter on July 2, nearly 36 hours after the flood waters and oil first began spilling over the levies. Although the “Code 3” organization from Colorado arrived to directly rescue and clean oil-covered flood animals, they didn’t clean the strays brought to the shelter from the flood area by the animal control officer. Our volunteers scrubbed at least 100 animals in the temporary outdoor shelter area from July 2 to July 4.
By July 4, the city had made arrangements with the local school district to let us move the shelter to a school building that was mostly unused, but still being maintained. I toured the facility, along with city commissioner Pam Jones and her husband Bill, determining that it would make a very satisfactory indoor shelter. The first representatives of the Humane Society of the United States arrived late in the afternoon and evening and said there would be a large air conditioned trailer arriving later that we could use to move the animals the next day on
July 5.
HSUS took over operation of the shelter just in time to relieve the private volunteer from Tulsa who had been leading us in the animals’ care since July 2. Theresa Turner had arrived on Monday with her 18 year old daughter. She had gone to help after Katrina and her learned experience helped us greatly those first 3 days. Exhausted, Theresa and daughter returned home after handing off the information we’d gathered about the animals.
Through the rest of July, we watched and helped as HSUS brought in wave after wave of paid staff and volunteers from all over the country. Considering the facility we had was not designed for animal care, the expertise of the HSUS people and the help of dozens of volunteers actually allowed us to do a pretty good job of caring for the animals.
By the end of the operation on July 30, we expected to have either returned to owners or adopted nearly all of the 200 or so animals for which we cared over the period.
The teary reunions and many thanks we’ve received have taught us that in helping these animals, we’ve indeed helped those families affected by the flood and its destruction. For those whose animals made it to the shelter, in the face of losing everything else, finding their animals in our care was a huge relief and affected the owners deeply.
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