Firefighter Rescues Dog from BIG Mess

February 1, 2001
Easton, Pennsylvania, USA

When Easton firefighter Jim Sepulveda arrived on the scene Wednesday morning, the 8-year-old Gordon setter calmly looked up at him as if to say, "What?  It's not my mess."

She would have been referring to the 20-ft. deep tank of sewage and wastewater in which she was situated.

At around 7:00 am, workers at the Williams Township wastewater plant heard barking from one of the oxidation tanks, where they discovered the black and brown dog clinging to a gate.  Presumably she had wandered in through a damaged opening.

Firefighters were called, and Sepulveda, wearing a cold-water suit was lowered via ladder until he was waist-deep in the 50-degree sludge.  The dog stopped barking and remained calm throughout the rescue once she realized that she was going to be helped.

Then Sepulveda placed a recovery net around the dog while rescuers lowered a metal strainer.  The dog was placed inside it and lifted away to safety, while people who had gathered at the scene issued a cry of relief.

Plant superintendent Bernie Wassel said that she could easily have been swept over the gate into the next ditch, where she would have been sucked into a pipe and killed.  "The fire department did a heck of a job. It was nice," he added.

Sepulveda said, "We took a lot of precautions.  I'm glad we were prepared, and we had the suit for it. It was a lot better for the dog doing it this way. Four or five years ago, we didn't have the cold-water suit."

The Gordon setter was taken to the Northampton County SPCA shelter where she received the bath of her life.  Attendants used shampoo and dishwashing liquid to cut through the mess, which hadn't harmed the dog.

She was wearing a green collar with red and white candy canes on it, but there were no tags indicating who her owner is.

Read the follow-up story February 13.

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