Workers at a Wheeling animal shelter said the cats and dogs there helped to save their own lives – jumping to higher ground – after a burst pipe overnight Tuesday caused flooding in the building, eventually leading to a full evacuation.
Workers and volunteers at Heartland Animal Shelter in Wheeling spent all day Wednesday dealing with the damage caused by the flooding.
“We had to evacuate the animals as quickly as possible. Quite frankly, my fear was that some had drowned. We had small kittens in bottom cages. I don’t know how they survived but they did,” shelter Executive Director Jenny Schlueter told Pioneer Press.
She explained that 101 animals – approximately 25 dogs and the rest cats – were inside the facility at the time of the flooding, which began underneath the shelter’s training hall, cracked the concrete floor and overwhelmed the drainage trenches in several rooms.
The ordeal started in the late-night Tuesday into the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Schlueter said a sanitation worker who had come by to pick up trash at approximately 6:30 a.m. Wednesday noticed an unusual number of cats up on a ledge in the window and then saw a lot of mud and water flowing out.
“He called 9-1-1. Then the fire department came out, and then the (village) called us. We had close to 2 feet of water all over the building,” Schlueter said.
Wheeling Village Manager Jon Sfondilis told Pioneer Press that first responders arrived on the scene after the sanitation worker’s emergency call where he said he noticed water coming from the shelter.
“As a courtesy, our Public Works Department did shut off the water supply to the building to stop the flow of water that was happening inside, but that is the extent of our involvement,” Sfondilis said. “It is not a public infrastructure issue. It was a private pipe inside the building that burst.”
According to Schlueter, security camera footage showed water up to the shoulders of some large dogs but many of the animals were able to get to higher ground or stood on their back legs to stay above the water.
“Our team worked quickly. The first thing they did was brought all the dogs outside. Then we started moving cats on lower-level cages to higher-level cages and we just started cleaning everything and called the flood mitigation company,” she said.
Shelter workers made public appeals for help, asking people to consider fostering a pet, donating supplies, making monetary donations, or any combination of those.
Additionally, Schlueter said two dogs and eight cats were sent to Anti-Cruelty in Chicago, 12 cats went to Tree House Humane Society in Chicago and some dogs went to Best Friends Pet Hotel in the town of Prairie View, which is near Buffalo Grove and Lincolnshire.
She said Wednesday that Animal Care League in Oak Park had plans to take 20 animals and the remaining 40 cats would be placed with Heartland Animal Shelter volunteers or staff.
“This is the time of year when everyone is crowded, so it’s really heartbreaking. I feel really guilty even asking for help because everyone is in the same situation we are,” Schlueter said about asking other organizations to chip in. “We really appreciate everyone’s help.”
According to Schlueter, Wheeling Animal Hospital took in 13 kittens that tested positive for feline panleukopenia virus and had been in the shelter’s isolation unit due to the care required for that rare and deadly virus.
“Basically what we need more than anything right now is money,” Schlueter said. “We’re still waiting to hear from our insurance adjuster. We hope a lot of this will be covered but we’re not sure. There’s a lot of financial expenses we have to pay.”
The money is expected to be used for such expenses as replacing food, linens and fundraising merchandise, and also paying for some boarding, and repairing the building.
The shelter’s website lists information for fostering a cat, and also has a detailed list of items the shelter is requesting for donation.
“Obviously what I would love to see is for all of our animals to get quickly adopted. They will continue to be on the website. We’ll just have to change their status from the location here in the shelter to foster,” said Schlueter.
She said “a lot of people” signed up to foster animals, in the wake of the flooding emergency. But she advised that they are also available for adoption.
The latter option, Schlueter said, “would be really great so we can focus on getting our shelter back up and running and save more animals and fill up again with more animals that need our help.”
According to Schlueter, Heartland Animal Shelter will be closed for a minimum of two weeks but probably closer to a month.
“The next thing we want to do is see if we can set up in a remote pop-up adoption center,” she said.
The shelter director said Signature Aviation at Chicago Executive Airport in Wheeling has offered storage space.
Jessi Virtusio is a freelancer.