District Dogs building shuttered following flooding that killed 10 pets

WASHINGTON — Weeks after flash flooding left 10 dogs dead at District Dogs in the 600 block of Rhode Island Avenue in Northeast, D.C., the sign was taken off the building. The future of that space is now in question. 

On Thursday, D.C.'s Department of Buildings said the building won't be able to house any other businesses, or anything else, without a thorough review process that considers the risk of future flooding and the safety of anyone inside. 

This comes just a few hours after the families of the dogs killed in the August flooding met with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and her staff in a closed-door meeting. 

"We are not going to let something like this happen again," said advisory neighborhood commissioner Colleen Costello. She lost her dog Maple in the flood and has been outspoken in the weeks since the tragedy about the problems that led up to it.

Among the issues discussed, she and others discussed that the mayor was keeping other businesses out of the location until it was safe. 

"In my view it's unsafe, and no one should be allowed to use it," Costello said.

"We had a lot of requests that we made of the mayor and her team. And personally, I got the sense that she is taking our requests and our concerns very seriously, and they’ve already started working on some of the issues that we identified as requiring remediation," Costello said. "I would have preferred to see a much stronger response with respect to OUC and making sure that the errors that a lot of people have been flagging for a long time get remedied. I did not walk away personally with the impression that that was a big problem on their radar screen. I hope I’m wrong, and I hope I just misread their responses. We’ll see."

The meeting with the mayor didn't just focus on the building itself, though. The families asked that there be some sort of stormwater runoff system along Rhode Island Avenue and the roads nearby to help with flooding. They also touched on new regulations for pet boarding facilities and suggested a thorough review of buildings prone to flooding. 

"We had a lot of requests that we made of the mayor and her team. And personally, I got the sense that she is taking our requests and our concerns very seriously, and they’ve already started working on some of the issues that we identified as requiring remediation," Costello said.

The meeting with the mayor lasted just over an hour. Another thing the families asked for was a special 911 task force to review problems with the city's Office of Unified Communications (OUC).

On the day of the flood, the OUC mislabeled the call as a leak and did not convey to first responders that a wall had collapsed and people and dogs were trapped.

 "I would have preferred to see a much stronger response with respect to OUC and making sure that the errors that a lot of people have been flagging for a long time get remedied. I did not walk away personally with the impression that that was a big problem on their radar screen. I hope I’m wrong, and I hope I just misread their responses. We’ll see."