RADFORD, Va. – It’s been more than a week since Helene barreled through our area and yet the clean up is far from over.
One place that’s still cleaning up is the Radford Animal Shelter. Flooding destroyed the building.
“Before the evacuation, we had three rabbits, we had 14 dogs, and we had over 40 cats and kittens,” said Adele Katrovitz, an animal control officer. “So, we were pretty full.”
Ahead of the storm, leaders at the shelter evacuated all the animals in preparation for floods.
“I’ve evacuated this shelter several times over the years,” said Katrovitz. “We put a post out on Facebook telling our community these animals need out of here”
What happened then they could have never prepared for.
“They take the animal home, we give them supplies to last a few days because that’s normally all it is” said Katrovitz. “You know, we come back, everything is great, you can bring the animals back. This time, obviously was a little bit different”
She said this has wrecked everything.
“It was six to seven foot,” said Katrovitz. “So it was probably about that high in here. Everything was probably an inch or two deep in silt and sludge and nasty stuff. The water came up to here in here as well, and, I mean, we are up in the air here. We’re not ground level.”
She had some good news though. The animals that were in temporary foster homes have either been adopted or are at another local shelter.
She said the next goal is to get the building safe enough so they can get even more folks in to clean and rebuild.
If you want to get involved and help the Radford Animal Shelter, they have a wishlist of items they need that you can find here.