photo by Captain Evan Rose
For the second time in about a week, Chattanooga firefighters came to the rescue of another member of the animal kingdom. In this case, it was a kitten.
Someone with St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Pine Street asked some of our firefighters from Station 1 if they could help get some cats out of a storm drain near the church. Captain Evan Rose with Ladder 1 said they agreed to try, and after chasing the cats back and forth between two different storm drains, they had to give up.
On Sunday, the firefighters were called again and asked if they would try again after church that morning. The mother cat was found dead, but one of her kittens was still alive in the storm drain. The firefighters agreed to try again. Using a search cam they located the kitten about 30 feet up the pipe. Captain Rose said they tried to coax the kitten to come their way, and tried to bribe it with food, but nothing worked. Finally, they got some spare SCBA air bottles and opened the valves quickly to make some noise, which scared the kitten in the direction of Firefighter Stephanie George, who was down in the storm drain waiting for the kitten to come her way. Firefighter George safely removed the kitten from the storm drain and handed it off to a very grateful Cassandra Lynch.
Ms. Lynch said she was a vet tech and she planned to take the kitten to McKamey Animal Center Monday morning to be checked out, and would make sure the kitten got a good home. After their successful animal rescue, the firefighters returned to their station on Main Street.
On June 6, firefighters rescued a duck and her eight ducklings after they fell into a storm drain on Highway 58 in front of Little Caesars.