By Kathy Chaffin
kchaffin@salisburypost.com
A gas chamber explosion in the mid-1980s led to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Care and Control euthanizing all unwanted cats and dogs by lethal injection.
Renee Tench, a Gaston County woman who was working at the shelter when the explosion happened, said the director at the time had already started phasing out the carbon monoxide gas chamber method.
But because of the cost of lethal injection and the fact that it wasn’t being done everywhere else, she said it was taking a while.
In the meantime, Tench said, the director insisted that unwanted cats and dogs rolled into the chamber in cages be able to see. “She couldn’t stand them dying in the dark.”
Tench said when the kennel attendant rolled in the cage of animals, it hit the light fixture inside the chamber and broke the bulb, exposing the wires.
Not realizing what had happened, she said, the attendant turned on the gas and waited a few minutes to make sure it was working before he turned the chamber light on.
“When he flipped the switch to the chamber light, he took a couple steps away from the chamber towards the door and then it exploded,” she said.
Tench said the door to the room struck the attendant in the back and pushed him about 12 feet out into the parking lot.
“He was bruised up,” she said, “but other than that, he was lucky the door hit him the way it did. The building looked like a bomb had gone off …
“It wasn’t blown away, it was just blown apart. I couldn’t believe it. It was amazing no one got seriously hurt.”
Tench said the explosion gave the director “a good out” to totally convert to lethal injection euthanasia.
“It worked out great actually,” she said, “because it was a matter of, we’re not going to spend the money to redo the building and then redo the chamber.”
Though Tench has very strong concerns about the use of carbon monoxide gas chambers, she said she is not a member of any animal advocate/welfare/rights/activist group and has never been interviewed on the euthanasia issue.
“I have no agenda other than the truth,” she said.
As a kennel attendant at Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Tench said she hated euthanizing unwanted animals in the carbon monoxide gas chamber.
“It was absolutely horrible,” she said. “They screamed very loudly, and you had a whole crate full of them screaming.
“They say that’s an involuntary muscle thing that happens … but I don’t care if it was involuntary or not … I never got used to it. It was awful.
“Their backs would arch as they were gasping for air and they were screaming at the same time. You can’t tell me that wasn’t painful.”
Veterinarian
Dr. Jane Williston, a veterinarian at the Armstrong Animal Clinic in Charlotte and chairwoman of the N.C. Veterinary Medical Association, said dogs will occasionally vocalize as they are losing consciousness.
“This is what the mass media opposes as being a horrific, painful death,” she said. “It’s an excited phase of the anesthetic induction. … Cats don’t go through the excitement phase of consciousness loss. Some dogs do, as do humans.
“If you talk to any human anesthetist, they’ll tell you the same phenomenon occurs.”
Williston said the carbon monoxide gas chamber method of euthanasia is not painful.
“If it was painful,” she said, “people would wake up from their sleep as they are being poisoned from carbon monoxide. There would be no need for carbon monoxide detectors in our homes.
“We don’t know it’s happening, which is what makes it so lethal.”
Kittens, puppies
Another problem Tench said she had with the chamber is that some of the kittens and puppies would still be alive at the end of the gassing cycle.
“Sometimes if they were young animals and some of the older animals would get on top of them,” she said, “there would still be like a little pocket of oxygen that helps keep them alive. … It was horrible because they were still alive, but yet they were suffering.”
When that would happen, Tench said she would get a supervisor to give a lethal injection to the young animals.
Legislation being considered in the N.C. General Assembly would ban euthanasia by carbon monoxide gas chamber. House Bill 6 is named “Davie’s Law/Humane Euthanasia in Shelters” after a puppy that survived a gas chamber and was later found alive in a plastic bag in a dumpster.
The bill has been referred to the Agriculture Committee as has House Bill 27, which would restrict the use of the carbon monoxide gas chamber method to feral animals.
Both humane
Dr. Williston said the N.C. Veterinary Medical Association’s position is that the carbon monoxide gas chamber is a humane method of euthanasia “if properly administered, accurately delivered and properly maintained.”
“We also feel that the ideal method of euthanasia of animals whenever possible is by intravenous injection,” she said.
Less than a third of the state’s 104 animal shelters continue to use the carbon monoxide gas chamber method.
During her two-and-a-half years as a kennel attendant at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg shelter, Tench said she had nightmares about the carbon monoxide chamber. Every time the heat or air would come on in her house, she said it reminded her of the gas being turned on.
She left Animal Care and Control because of the long hours and her frustration at having to deal with irresponsible pet owners. She went to work for the city of Charlotte as a code enforcement officer, a job from which she recently retired.
Archaic method
Susan Boyer, who was working at the shelter at the time of the chamber explosion and still works part time as a vet technician, was euthanizing dogs by lethal injection the day a delegation of Rowan County officials visited to view the process. A resident of Mooresville, she said she believes the carbon monoxide gas chamber method is “archaic.”
Though she was upset by a Feb. 24 Salisbury Post article quoting Rowan Director of Administration Ken Deal, as describing the lethal injection method as “gruesome,” Boyer said she believes something positive will come out of the viewing.
There is no way to compare the budgets for Mecklenburg with Rowan and other smaller counties, she said, but she believes the smaller counties will eventually switch to lethal injection euthanasia for dogs and cats.
“I don’t think that’s anything that’s going to happen overnight,” she said. “I think it’s going to be baby steps until everyone has received the proper training.”
Most of the Rowan Animal Control staff are trained in lethal injection, but they will receive new training along with other animal shelter employees throughout the state under new rules set by the Veterinary Division of the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
Coming Saturday: More on euthanasia legislation being reviewed in the N.C. General Assembly and adoption and spay/neuter efforts in Rowan and other counties.
Contact Kathy Chaffin at 704-797-4249.