PORT TOWNSEND — A small dog was back home Tuesday after a four-hour ordeal at the bottom of a storm drain that made her family fear for her life.
Edie, a 5-year-old Jack Russell terrier, fell into the drain behind Blue Heron Middle School on Monday night and was rescued after firefighters dug through
2 feet of dirt and asphalt to reach the frightened animal.
“I’m so glad there were so many pet lovers in the fire department and the city,” said Mike McConaghy.
He had brought Edie with him in his car when he came to the school to pick up his children, Travis, 11, and Elena, 12.
“With all the bad news that you hear and read in the paper, it was nice to have something positive happen,” McConaghy said.
McConaghy, a caregiver at Seaport Landing in Port Townsend, let the dog out of his car shortly before 6 p.m. while he talked with a friend.
When he looked for Edie a little later, she was nowhere to be found.
“This surprised me because she is usually really good about staying close and will come when she is called,” McConaghy said.
Thinking that Edie had headed toward the Jefferson County Fairgrounds, McConaghy and a friend walked behind the school.
Yelping was heard coming from a manhole cover in the road behind the school.
The two men searched until they found an open 12-inch horizontal drainage pipe running from the bottom of a nearby storm basin next to the school track, decided the dog was trapped inside and called 9-1-1 dispatchers, said Bill Beezley, East Jefferson Fire-Rescue spokesman.
Travis and Elena had joined the search after they finished sports practice and realized their dog was stuck in a drain pipe.
The children were inconsolable, McConaghy said.
They had grown attached to the dog after rescuing her shortly before Christmas 2012.
She was called “Spot” when the family found the dog at the Jefferson County Animal Shelter, but they renamed her Edie in honor of Eddie, the Jack Russell terrier who appeared in “Frasier,” the popular Seattle-based sitcom.
Port Townsend police officers initially investigated. They called in the fire department for assistance.
City workers John Freitas and Jimmy Aman provided a camera normally used to view underground plumbing.
It was snaked 75 feet up the 12-inch drainage pipe to an underground concrete storm-drain vault, where they saw Edie stuck behind a vertical ladder, Beezley said.
Before seeing Edie on the small monitor, McConaghy feared she might have drowned or suffered from hypothermia because they had not heard a sound from her for a while.
The rescuers pored over blueprints of the storm drainage system to identify the exact location of the vault.
Then, they hacked through asphalt and dug about 2 feet into the soil below to reach the top of the vault.
After opening the stormwater maintenance hole in the top of the 12-foot-high vault, volunteer firefighter Max Plattner entered the vault and retrieved Edie, scared but unhurt, at 10:22 p.m.
Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
