Lawsuit: Georgetown kennel had electrical problems before 75 dogs died in fire
Some owners of the 75 dogs who died in the September fire at a pet kennel in Georgetown have sued the business, saying the owner knew the facility had electrical problems before the tragedy happened.
"We have very good reason to believe that Mr. (Phillip) Paris was aware of fire-like events such as smoke and sparks that occurred over the summer," said Ard Ardalan, the attorney for the pet owners.
Paris, a former Georgetown police officer who owned the Ponderosa Pet Resort, did not respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit.
READ: Mix of heartbreak, outrage as Georgetown community mourns dogs killed in pet resort fire
The pet owners are seeking more than $1 million in damages.
The facility had been running on an overloaded and aging electrical system before the fire, Ardalan said.
"Ponderosa was definitely overloaded in the type of electric equipment it was running at any one time," he said. "There were fans running 24/7, AC units running, refrigerators running, blowers running, bug zappers plugged in and also air purifiers," he said.
Ardalan declined to comment further about how he learned of the issues alleged in the suit.
Twenty-four pet owners who lost a total of 14 dogs filed the lawsuit Nov. 4 against Ponderosa Pet Resort, Paris and Buen Perro Holdings LLC. The dogs the owners lost ranged in age from two 4-month old Shetland sheepdogs named Bunnie and Clyde to a 10-year-old pit bull named Canelo.
READ: Georgetown plans to update fire code to require smoke alarms in kennels after 75 dogs die
The lawsuit also asks a judge to issue a restraining order to prevent Paris from tearing down the pet facility at 2815 N. Austin Ave. Paris has said through attorneys that he plans to destroy it, according to the lawsuit.
Ardalan said he has not been allowed to see inside the building and his clients also haven't been allowed to view it without signing an agreement that they wouldn't sue.
The kennel fire that killed 75 puppies and other dogs started around 10:40 p.m. Sept. 18.
"The fire was initially ignited by an electrical source in the kennel area on the north side of the building which burned flammable building materials causing an accumulation of flames and deadly smoke," the lawsuit said.
Because no employees were at the building at the time, officials were only notified of the fire by a 911 caller about 15 minutes after it started, officials have said. They said the first firefighters arrived around five minutes later, but by the time they entered the building, all the pets inside had been asphyxiated or burned alive
The kennel was unlicensed, had no fire detection equipment such as a smoke alarm and had no fire sprinkler system, the lawsuit said.
It was not legally required to have fire detection equipment or a sprinkler system, city officials have said.
Georgetown Fire Chief John Sullivan said this week that the Fire Department still has not determined exactly what caused the fire.
READ: We checked on fire safety regulations for boarding facilities. Here's what we found.
The facility did have a motion-activated camera that captured the start of the fire, the lawsuit said. It said the camera was not monitored by any employee at that time.
Paris had told owners that either a staff member was present at the kennel or the 24-hour surveillance system’s live feed was being monitored by a person, according to the suit. He also referred to the presence of other security systems at the kennel, the suit said.
After the fire, Paris "contradicted his prior reassurances and stated that they were 'in between systems' and that there were no such security systems in place at the time of the fire," according to the lawsuit.
No Central Texas city, including Georgetown, requires such facilities to be equipped with sprinkler systems or be staffed at all times, according to an American-Statesman survey of city regulations. And there are no state laws requiring sprinkler systems in pet boarding facilities.
The Georgetown Building Standards Commission approved several changes to the city's fire code Oct. 21, including requiring existing animal housing or care facilities to have a smoke or heat alarm system installed with automatic notification to a monitoring company, unless the facility has staffing onsite at all times, the city's website said.
The proposed changes include requiring new animal housing or care facilities to have electronically supervised carbon monoxide and smoke detection systems.
Automatic sprinkler systems would also be required at new facilities, unless the facility installs a fire alarm system with automatic electronic notification to an alarm company and fire-resistant interior materials.
The proposed changes will be presented to the City Council for possible amendment and/or adoption in January.
State Rep. James Talarico, D-Round Rock, filed a bill during the third special legislative session in October to require smoke detectors and sprinkler systems in kennels that do not have staffers present at all times, with criminal penalties for noncompliance.
Gov. Greg Abbott, who set the agenda for the special session, did not ask the Legislature to address the bill, so it had no chance of becoming law.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Suit: Georgetown kennel had electrical issues before 75 dogs died in fire
