For animal lovers, one of the more harrowing moments of the last week was when video emerged of a dog in the southwestern town of Głuchołazy battling for its life as water swirled around it.
Initially presumed dead after it was spotted being carried away by the raging torrent, it was later revealed to have survived after being plucked out of the water by a selfless onlooker.
This was not a one-off. Tales of incredible survival proliferate on the web, with social media bristling with pictures of cats, dogs, and even deer being carried to safety by firemen, as well as horses being led through the waters by emergency workers.
In one video that has since gone viral, a man is seen being winched from the floods by a helicopter with his dog clasped closely to his chest.
There was tragedy as well. According to reports, several dogs died after owners fleeing the floods abandoned their pets and left them chained in their yards to face certain death.
Speaking to the Wprost news outlet, Karolina Kuszlewicz, an animal protection lawyer, said: “We saw lots of heroic actions in which animals were saved, but also instances of people who left their pets to die.”
Fortunately, such cases were not the rule. “When we went to the flood-affected areas, we expected a sea of dead animals, but this wasn’t the reality,” Agata Geilke of the Empatii animal charity told private broadcaster TVN. “People took note of the appeals, and many took care of their animals.
“Many people, taught by the experience of the floods in 1997, knew how to behave and were prepared for such eventualities,” she added.
Cruelty and kindness
Stories of cruelty have been offset by touching examples of human warmth.
As a flood wave approached the southwestern town of Oława, workers at an animal shelter were surprised to find people at the gates queuing to take in their dogs and give them a home, be it temporary or permanent. These scenes were repeated in many other towns.
Talking to TVP World, a spokesman from the TOZ shelter in the nearby city of Wrocław said: “There was never any panic. We secured the shelter with sandbags and were helped by so many members of the public. The animals were never alone or stressed.”
He added: “We prepared for the worst and found help from other shelters, such as the one in Poznań, who came forward to say they would take in our animals if the worst came about.”
The plight of Wrocław became one of the biggest stories last week. As the flood wave surged towards Poland’s third largest city, the country watched with bated breath to see if the town would be submerged.
While some residents evacuated, thousands stayed behind to build defenses in a remarkable display of solidarity.
Often working through the night, young and old labored side-by-side to protect their city from the elements. Bracing for the worst, the city’s zoo published an appeal for volunteers to lay sandbags around the complex.
“The response was huge,” says Joanna Rańda of Wrocław Zoo. “Within minutes a dozen people showed up to help; we later had to put up a post on Facebook saying we no longer needed help.”
Among the volunteers were 15 schoolchildren who had chosen to skip their online lessons to defend the zoo, as well as one man who traveled 220 kilometers with a shovel from the central Polish city of Łódź after hearing the zoo’s call to arms.
Search & Rescue
Animals were not just victims; they were heroes as well. In Lewin Brzeski, a southwestern town left devastated by the flooding, one of these unlikely stars proved to be a three-year-old labrador named Bajka.
Though earning her certificate to search ruined buildings just days before, Bajka found herself joining her handler, Szymon Oparowski, the commander of the specialist fire brigade search and rescue unit in the nearby town of Skarbimierz, as he led rescue operations in the stricken town.
Using boats to evacuate members of the public, several of Oparowski’s unit canceled holidays to instead work around the clock as they rescued those left stranded by the waters. Also with them was Bajka.
“We evacuated 24 people in total,” Oparowski told TVP World, “but we found many that refused to leave. In these cases, we delivered essentials such as food, water, toilet paper, and, of course, pet food.”
One resident, says Oparowski, was discovered with a dog. “We asked her where she was walking her pet to allow it to go to the toilet, and she replied, ‘the attic’. It was heartbreaking.”
While search and rescue dogs across Poland had been placed on standby during the floods, only a few saw action.
“Bajka’s job was to use her nose to guide us to any people stuck in houses,” says Oparowski.
Trained to pick up the scent of living humans, through her presence on the bow of the boat, Bajka enabled search and rescue teams to move swiftly without stopping to conduct unnecessary searches of empty properties.
“When conducting a waterborne operation like this, the boat will attempt to sail against the direction of the wind, and its handler will then observe the dog’s body language to see how it reacts to new human scents,” said Agnieszka Pieprzowska of the search and rescue unit of the Marki fire department outside Warsaw.
“A good search and rescue dog like Bajka will have a nose that’s around 100,000 times more powerful than a human,” she added, “which makes such dogs invaluable on searches when every minute counts.”
Now resting after a grueling few days of work, for Bajka, the rewards have made her contribution worthwhile. “She got to play lots of games of tug with her favorite toy,” says Oparowski.
