VIDEO: Members of the St. Tammany Fire Department say in all their years, they have never gotten a call for help like the one they got Tuesday. It was a call that led to more than three hours underground, with their parish partners who manage the drainage system.
If Meatball, the 17-year-old Shih Tzu mix, could talk, man, would he have a story to tell about the 30 hours spent deep below his home in Lacombe in the maze of drainage infrastructure. “I was looking in all the bushes. I was looking across the street in the tall grass. I mean, I was looking in the ditches,” recalls Meatball’s owner, Chuck Gorney.
Meatball’s AirTag pinged him on a road next to the house, but what happened next involves several men from St. Tammany Fire District 3 and the Department of Public Works. The men went deep down into storm drains, crawling through wet culverts, then even broke up the street and a drainage pipe from above, all with no luck. You see, the AirTag was marking Meatball’s last location before it went out.
The distance from the road, probably where Meatball got in, to all the way back to Bayou Rouville is about two-thirds of a mile, and at one point, the firefighters thought they’d have to stop because there is no way of getting him, but they kept on. “We just kept going. We persevered through a lot of spiders, a lot of crawling, a lot of backache,” said Jordy Johnson, Firefighter, Operator, EMT, Upgrade Captain with St. Tammany Fire District 3. Next, a neighbor’s tractor helped them through the brush to enter the drainage system from the bayou side. “We’re here in Lacombe, so alligators, opossums, rats, you know raccoons, snakes, snakes galore,” said Johnson.
Finally, as it was getting dark, they reached him. “Just relieved that he was alive and we was able to find him. I didn’t realize it at first, but then they told me in the car that he was deaf and blind. So, he couldn’t hear us calling him,” said Gerald Cousin, a group leader of Area 2, St. Tammany Public Works Department, which manages the drainage system.
Were you scared that when you got to him, he was going to run? “No ma’am, because we were informed that he was deaf and blind,” said Patrick Pereira, a Firefighter, Operator, and EMT with St. Tammany Fire District 3, who was the one who grabbed Meatball in the culvert. “We not only serve humans, but we also serve and help to save the lives of animals, puppies. They’re family to all of you as our community, and they are family to us as well,” said Chief Michael Geissler, with St. Tammany Fire District 3.
“I guess tears come to my eyes and thankful he’s still alive. It’s just a happy cry. So glad that he’s alive,” said Gorney. It’s an adventure that earned Meatball extra cuddles after a long bath. Meatball is also a lucky dog because the weather has been dry, so those drainage pipes only had a small amount of standing water in them.
