Three crisis canine teams arrived in Juneau last week, with dogs that are trained to provide comfort and emotional support to residents after the Aug. 6 flood created varying degrees of disaster for 290 homeowners.
Juneau is already the home to over 9,000 dogs, so what’ three more?
The comfort canines, not to be confused with therapy dogs, will be visiting the flood-impacted neighborhoods in the Mendenhall Valley, going to schools, disaster assistance centers, and any shelters that remain open. The dogs will be in town until Aug. 21.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Forest Service wrote an “acknowledgement” of the event, which occurred out of a well-known hazard that could have been mitigated over the past years, rather than allowed to continue to seasonally create flooding. Suicide Basin is a geologic feature where water and ice get backed up in a large pond, and then releases in a gush when the pressure is great enough. The local, state, and federal governments have taken no action to prevent this disaster, although they have had years to do so.
All the areas that were closed in the Mendenhall Glacier area that are under the Forest Service’s jurisdiction are are now reopened, and campers, tourists, and locals are returning to the places that were recently underwater. Nearby, homeowners are tearing out sheetrock and insulation in a race against time as fall approaches.
The Forest Service is also focused on “supporting emotional and mental well-being of our employees and has organized a team ‘check-in’ that will include a mental health counselor for those team members who feel they would benefit from information about stress, trauma and grief,” the regional forester said in a statement.
Comfort canines are specially trained to wag their tales and lick you in the face. Therapy dogs just overbill you.
🤣
”If people have souls, Dogs have souls”.
Just another band-aid… like delayed permit fees for remedial work last year. No real solutions like a levee around Mendenhall Lake to turn it into a surge basin to manage the water release. After all, we certainly don’t want to tamper with the so-called “Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area”… even if the glacier itself is just a few years away from disappearing altogether. We all know the leftists consider ground out there is sacred; far more important than the well-being of thousands of residents in Mendenhall Valley as well as those of the entire community of Juneau. Let’s be honest, if the Mendenhall Valley must be evacuated next year then the entire borough of Juneau will go into an economic tailspin. The time for real action is overdue. A levee must be built yesterday.
Nice tongue and cheek there Suzanne. This year was worse than last which had entire big houses falling in the river. The fact the powers that be have not made this a major issue to deal with is pushing insane. But we got 3 extra dogs out of the deal.