WEST PALM FIRE RESCUE GOES DEEP TO SAVE PUPPY
It took about an hour of digging to free the trapped puppy.
WEST PALM BEACH — We’ve heard about firefighters rescuing kittens from trees.
But on Sunday, six West Palm firefighters saved a puppy in a pipe.
West Palm Beach resident Lisa Gerard, her daughters Hannah and Lila and their 10-week-old pug, Hank, were visiting Lisa’s sister, Marisa Marulli, in the Grandview Heights neighborhood Sunday afternoon when Lisa stepped out to give Hank a quick walk.
“A few minutes later, she called up to my roommate,” Marisa said. “It didn’t sound right.”
Marisa, her face coated in green acne cream, charged outside. “I looked at her face and I see this pipe and there he was — way down in it — and you could barely see his face.”
Near the bushes and trees in front of the N Street townhouse was a 6-inch-wide PVC pipe she hadn’t noticed before, its uncovered opening flush with the ground. Six feet down, in almost complete darkness, was little Hank, yelping, with barely an inch to move.
“Everyone cried. We weren’t sure he was going to make it.”
With a call to 911, a half-dozen firefighters soon arrived.
“They started digging and dig-
ging and digging, all around the pipe,” Marisa said.
Hank was too deep to reach in and grab him, so the plan was to dig all around the pipe so they could saw enough of it off to get closer. Meanwhile, they ran an oxygen tube down the pipe to help him breathe.
They dug for at the better part of an hour, getting rid of all the dirt. “That was the part that was so scary. But they were so relentless. They dug and dug and next thing you know, this one firefighter is 6 feet deep in this hole he’s created and they’re sawing this thing.”
Finally they sawed half the pipe off. The man in the hole, Julian Stout, was lying on his side, blindly reaching into the narrow pipe. “Got him!” he shouted.
But Stout couldn’t get up because he had the puppy in one arm and was lying on the other. The other firefighters grabbed Stout by the left leg and crook of his left arm and hoisted him out, Hank in hand.
“We had neighbors come over, it was quite the scene and those gentlemen were unbelievable — so, so nice” — said Marisa, who at that point was remembering she had green pimple cream all over her face. “They wouldn’t give up.”
Someone from Animal Control arrived as well and gave the pup a quick checkup. Hank’s temperature was a bit high. A cool bath was recommended.
“He was in there one or two hours and it was really scary,” Marisa said afterward. “He was yelping and yelping in there and he’s just 10 weeks old and it was frightening for us,” she said.
But finally, all was well. Baths were taken, tears were dried.
“He’s all clean and happy and fine,” she said.