One of the tragedies from our flooding here in the Binghamton, New York area was that many animals left abandoned in the Petco store in Johnson City, New York died. Petco says that they had no advance warning about the flooding. Everyone who was here for the flooding on 9/6 and 9/7 knows that this is completely untrue. All day long on Wednesday, 2011/09/06, there was torrential rain falling. Businesses were closing. Roads were closing. A state of emergency was declared. People were being evacuated. By 3:30 P.M., route 88 was closed West of Exit 3 due to a rockslide. Yet Petco claims that by 11:45 PM on Wednesday night, their store was flooded and they had no idea that it might flood.
Other local pet stores handled things better. After the flooding, Pet Depot employees evacuated their animals by kayak. Petco did nothing. Local blogs here say that Petco associates wanted to take animals home on Wednesday night - when the torrential rain was falling but the store was not yet flooded. This request was denied.
Here are two very different treatments of this story - one from a local TV station (WBNG) and one from our Gannett newspaper (Binghamton Press). The "Press" story reads more like a Petco publicity release than like news.
http://www.wbng.com/news/local/Saturday--Petco-129586498.html
http://www.pressconnects.com/article/20110910/NEWS01/109100392/PETCO-discovery-Close-100-animals-lost-flood
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