A resident of the Northeast D.C. neighborhood where 10 dogs drowned when a doggy day care flooded two weeks ago has video from a previous that he says shows this tragedy was not “unprecedented” as the director of the city’s 911 call center has said.
The video shows an apartment building on Rhode Island Avenue while it was under construction during a September 2020 flash flood. District Dogs would later call that building home.
The video shows construction workers trapped on an upper floor by floodwaters that had, in an instant, turned Rhode Island Avenue into a raging river. A worker who was outside the building actually had to climb a tree to escape the floodwaters.
“Predictable,” said Gordon Chaffin, who recorded the flood on his phone. “The ingredients have been here for years and years.”
He is a former infrastructure reporter familiar with the plan for DC Water’s Northeast Boundary Tunnel, which will add 90 million gallons of capacity to the storm and wastewater system in the area. After seeing the catastrophic floods of September 2020, August 2022 and Aug. 14, he wonders if it will be enough.
“You have climate change that’s making weather patterns more intense more frequently, and you have a lot of surface area here in this area that will just collect stormwater,” Chaffin said.
His video has become a rallying point for critics of the emergency response at District Dogs.
“This was an unprecedented event,” D.C. Office of Unified Communications Director Heather McGaffin said at a confrontational press conference Monday.
The first 911 call reporting the floodwaters rushing into District Dogs came in at 5:06 p.m. But rescue teams didn’t begin to enter for another 20 minutes.
Flood response timeline:
District Dogs said Tuesday that they “remain committed to and focused on supporting our staff and clients” and had no further comment.
Ward 5 Council member Zachary Parker is calling for warning beacons that detect rising water to be installed in that flood-prone area.
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