A dog that got stuck in a Boalsburg storm drain was reunited with his family early Wednesday morning after a six-hour rescue effort by firefighters, road workers, sewer authority staff and neighbors.
Boalsburg Fire Company was dispatched at 7:23 p.m. to the 1300 block of Andover Drive, where a dog named Blizzard had entered the storm drain through an outlet pipe in his family’s backyard. Chief Van Winter said Blizzard traveled more than 100 feet up the drain pipe and firefighters could hear him barking.
Though they knew where he was, the rescue operation turned out to be not so simple.
Crews tried several ideas from firefighters and neighbors. They tried noise and blowing air with a leaf blower. They tried a firehose without the water turned on. They tried treats. They managed to get a hook onto Blizzard’s leash but could not get him to come out.
Because of sediment buildup in the pipe, Blizzard had gotten himself wedged inside.
“We couldn’t budge the dog out because he was just stuck in the sediment from over the years of the road, the stones and dirt and everything like that washing down that culvert piping,” Winter said. “When you walk through somewhere and you get in a real muddy area and you step and your boot comes off — he was the boot. He was stuck into that.”
University Area Joint Authority staff brought a drain pipe camera to the scene so crews could get a picture of where and how Blizzard was lodged. They then used a vacuum truck to remove a large amount of sediment, but it still wasn’t enough.
Talk then began to turn to calling in the Harris Township road crew to cut the road open. Winter said that with rain in the forecast for Wednesday, they knew they had to get Blizzard out sooner than later.
“I said this has to be done now,” Winter said. “We’re talking three-quarters of an inch of rain tomorrow. If we don’t get this dog out of here now, this dog’s not going to come out. I said we don’t want a recovery mission; we want to we want a rescue mission. We want to get this dog out. The University Area Joint Authority guy said ‘exactly right. We can’t wait for the rain.’”
Harris Township personnel brought in equipment to open the road with the assistance of firefighters, and UAJA vacuumed out debris. After cutting open the culvert pipe, they could see Blizzard about 6 feet away, and more sediment was vacuumed and shoveled out until finally he had enough space to get free.
At about 1:15 a.m., Winter called to Blizzard, who began to walk out on his own and was helped onto the surface by Assistant Chief Nate Frey.
“He was more willing to come out of that culvert pipe at that point in time. After six hours, he was more than willing to get out of there,” Winter said.
Blizzard was greeted by his family and dozens of neighbors who spent the night awaiting the rescue and offering help. He was uninjured and in good spirits as he chowed down on a hot dog.
His family posted on the Boalsburg Fire Company page later Wednesday that Blizzard was doing well — though he might still need a few more baths — and thanked the firefighters and volunteers for their efforts.
“This is a feel-good story for the community,” Winter said. “It was a community effort, because we used the residents’ ideas and equipment to help work this dog out. Everyone participated in trying to get this dog out. Unfortunately, we had to go to the big guns with the backhoes and stuff like that to dig down in. But the outcome is exactly what everybody wanted.”
