Hurricane Berry created a 2-mile-wide storm in July that caused a torrential downpour in southern Arkansas, flooding the Humane Society of Clark County.
Janie Allen, president of the Humane Society board, said that while it does usually flood around the shelter, getting up in the driveway and a little bit through the door, this time the water was up to her knees.
“We had to quickly rescue the kittens out of the cages, and in the back of the warehouse, I had some puppies holding on to the sides of the cages, trying to stay out of the water,” Allen said. “When we went into the yard, the main area where we house our dogs, the water was up to my chest.
“My son was with me, and he was handing me a couple of puppies, and we were using a trough that floated and putting puppies in it to get them out.”
Allen said the shelter sits on a basin, and the sewers in the area are old and haven’t been maintained properly to accommodate the amount of water the shelter accumulated that night.
“There are a lot of issues here, and the situation created the perfect storm, sort of, because we had water rushing from about three directions, and the site just couldn’t handle it,” Allen said. “The water was swift — it was unbelievable the amount of water.
“We had to basically help each other over to get here, and once we got here, that was the scene we saw. Once it quit raining, in about an hour or less, the water immediately started going down, but for that 30 minutes, we were in trouble.”
She said that because the water was so high in the shelter, mold developed behind the walls and saturated the insulation. Allen said they’ve had to gut the walls back to the studs in order to get rid of the mold.
“Now we are in the process of putting everything back together,” Allen said. “We are going to build back the walls on the inside of the shelter and bring the cats back and open business again.”
She said the shelter is closed but is expected to be fully reopened within two or three weeks. While it is closed, the shelter had to foster out all of its animals.
“It was about 150 animals that are in foster homes,” Allen said. “Luckily, being in foster homes, we have had a lot of adoptions that way. We have probably had about 12 to 15 dogs that are going to be adopted and an even higher number on the cats.
“We are very excited about that. We still probably have about 40 dogs coming back and in the neighborhood of around 60 cats, so we are still not out of animals.”
Amanda Malcom Bell, director of the Humane Society of Clark County, said she personally took home 43 cats.
“And yes, I’m still married,” she said, joking. “Some of the ones that didn’t get adopted, people have been good enough to post them on social media, and a lot of the cats and dogs that have moved between homes have landed in their adopted homes.”
She said that the Saturday after it flooded, someone had dumped 11 kittens at the shelter. She said she posted the kittens on social media, and luckily, they were all adopted. She said it is kind of unbelievable that people still expect for the shelter to take animals.
“I don’t have a shelter,” Bell said. “I can’t put anymore downstairs in my house; we are extended as far as we can. If we are up here, almost every day, somebody will show up and bring us animals — it has been crazy.
“I feel terrible that I can’t help them, even though we are completely overwhelmed. We still feel terrible that we can’t help save these animals.”
“The biggest challenge is telling people no,” Allen said. “We don’t have anywhere to put [an animal], and we don’t have any way of taking it and making sure it is safe.
“That’s been our biggest challenge, and that is not something we like to do. At this point and time, we aren’t taking anything new.”
Allen said there are only so many foster homes and so many people who are willing to take on the responsibility of being a foster-animal shelter. She said right now, she has about eight Humane Society animals and five cats and four dogs of her own.
“I am hoping to get the shelter fully reopened within two or three weeks,” Allen said. “I am talking to people in hopes of getting donated materials. We are trying to get volunteers to do the walls for us, in hopes of getting the cost down as much as possible.”
She said the shelter’s next project is to try to find some land and build a shelter on higher ground.
“We are always going to be on the lower end, so we are trying to relocate, with the idea of being on higher ground,” Allen said. “We are looking at several spots and have talked to the people who own them and are trying to fit it into our budget.
“Obviously, we would love to have a donation. We need about 5 acres so we can spread out and have room for our animals to exercise and areas where people can take the dogs for walks.”
Bell said the current shelter used to be a feed store, so she would like to find a place that is more suited for an animal shelter.
“We have worked really hard to get this place functional and have proper drainage and have a proper kennel set up,” Bell said, “but it would be amazing if we could design something to be an animal shelter. …We have spent a fortune to get this building where it needs to be, but there is no guarantee that something like this flood wouldn’t happen again.”
Bell has been director of the Humane Society for more than three years, and she said it was kind of surreal, after spending so much time and money to fix up the place, to have it wiped away in one night.
“Right after the flood, it was like an ant hill. We had so many volunteers come and help us,” Allen said. “It was unbelievable. In two days, we were able to find enough homes for all the animals, and we had people coming down here and packing up our stuff and moving everything into the main warehouse.
“We couldn’t have accomplished it without the help of the community — it was just too much.”
There is a GoFundMe page set up for the Humane Society of Clark County to help raise funds for the shelter and the repairs. Donations are also accepted through the society’s website, at humanesocietyclarkcounty.org. Volunteers can also contact Bell at (870) 230-2391 if they would like to help or donate supplies.
Allen said the humane society will remain at the current shelter for at least two years, and in that time, the organization will make the space livable so that it will either be used by the humane society or be sold.
“We don’t know yet what we are going to use it for,” she said. “It may be used as a resale shop or something like that to help us with more income. We are just not sure.
“Right now, we want to get back to where the community knows where we are [so people are] able to visit us like they did before. That is what we are wanting to do — continue to save stray animals. We want to be operational so we can continue to work.”
Staff writer Sam Pierce can be reached at (501) 244-4314 or spierce@arkansasonline.com.