By Kathy Chaffin
kchaffin@salisburypost.com
The director of Iredell Animal Services said Internet accounts of a carbon monoxide gas chamber explosion at the Statesville shelter last summer are greatly exaggerated.
“We did have a flashback,” said Chris Royal. “It was like a spark went around the top of the chamber. We called the fire department for safety reasons, and then it was all over the Internet and everywhere that our chamber blew up.”
Royal said the incident was caused by a malfunctioning, non-explosive fan, which has since been replaced.
A July 22, 2008, WSOC TV online account described the incident as “a small explosion” and said it was quickly under control.
The following day, the Statesville Record and Landmark account described the incident as “an electrical malfunction.” Royal is quoted in the article as saying Technician Angela Hartness, who was operating the chamber at the time, described it as “a kind of explosion …
“There was a ‘kaboom, kaboom,’ and then there was like a bolt of lightning.”
Royal told the Post the 10 dogs inside the chamber were already dead when the incident occurred.
Even now, she said, various animal Web sites report the incident as being much more serious.
Royal said the Iredell County manager and assistant manager replied to some of the Web sites saying their accounts were not true. “But you can’t stop it,” she said. “I’ve even had people calling from New York telling me that we are barbaric, and that they weren’t moving here if we still use the gas chamber.”
The Web site for the N.C. Coalition for Humane Euthanasia includes a posting reading, “Do you know an animal shelter employee who may have been exposed to carbon monoxide while working with a gas chamber? Shelter employees, community service workers, inmates, or relatives of those individuals can call North Carolina Department of Labor to report possible hazards: 1-800-625-2267.”
Michelle King, a board member for the coalition, which she has said is not an activist group, brought up the safety hazards carbon monoxide gas chambers pose for animal shelter staff at a Jan. 15 meeting with N.C. Sen. Andrew Brock.
Royal said it’s stressful enough for animal shelter employees to euthanize unwanted cats and dogs. “To have these groups constantly badgering us just adds more stress.”
What people don’t realize, Royal said, “is the dogs that normally come to the shelter, they’re not your little ‘Fluffy’ and ‘Fu Fu’ like are in everyone’s home.”
Though some owners have surrendered pets due to losing their homes to foreclosure or simply not having enough money to provide for them, she said the majority are strays. “And I’d say 95 percent of our cats are feral.”
Iredell Animal Services uses both the carbon monoxide gas chamber and lethal injection methods of euthanasia, and Royal said she believes animal shelters should be able to continue to use both.
The Iredell animal shelter uses lethal injection to euthanize cats and dogs that are under 16 weeks of age, pregnant and seriously sick or injured. This practice will soon be required across the state under new euthanasia rules set by the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
“We may not agree with everything the Agriculture Department has passed,” she said, “but those rules are better than what these animal activists are trying to pass in Raleigh is the way I look at it.”
House Bill 6 now being considered in the N.C. General Assembly would ban the carbon monoxide chamber method of euthanasia altogether, while House Bill 27 would only allow it to be used for feral animals.
Royal said she believes the lethal injection method is just as hard emotionally ó if not harder ó on staff as the carbon monoxide gas chamber. “It’s hard to hold, in the case of Iredell County,” she said, “over 6,000 animals a year in your arms while they die. These animal activists, evidently, they don’t realize that.”
When it comes to aggressive or feral animals, Royal said she believes the carbon monoxide gas chamber method is safer for staff. “And their safety is what I have to think about,” she said.
“I told them in Raleigh the way I felt,” she said. “There’s no one that loves animals more than we do. It’s stressful. You have to detach yourself from the animals.
“When I went to euthanasia class, I had one down there that followed me everywhere I went, and I had to euthanize it. But you’ve got to realize that they are better off than they are living out being feral and starving to death.
“It’s pitiful. … What we need are more responsible pet owners.”
Royal said opponents of the carbon monoxide gas chamber always bring up the crying and howling sounds of the animals being euthanized. “But they’re already unconscious if they howl,” she said. “It’s the carbon monoxide going through their bodies.
“It’s not a reaction that happens when they’re awake.”
In 2008, Iredell Animal Services euthanized 2,549 dogs and 3,608 cats. Their bodies were buried at the county landfill.
Contact Kathy Chaffin at 704-797-4249.