South Australia bushfires: Calls to charge owners of Tea Tree Gully Boarding Kennel and Cattery

ANGERED animal lovers are calling for the owners of a South Australian kennel where more than 40 pets perished in disastrous bushfires to be charged.

ANGERED animal lovers are calling for the owners of a South Australian kennel where more than 40 pets perished in disastrous bushfires to be charged.

The owners of Tea Tree Gully Boarding Kennel and Cattery have gone to ground with their business’s Facebook page and website no longer accessible after the husband and wife pair faced a torrent of abuse.

Paracombe and Tea Tree Gully CFS rescue dogs from the Tea Tree Gully Boarding Kennel and Cattery. Picture Dylan Coker

Paul Hicks and his partner were forced to flee the Inglewood property that was booked up with more than 80 dogs and cats over the New Years weekend as fire spread throughout the region on Saturday morning.

Only 45 survived.

Some animals escaped the flames while others, locked up inside the kennels and cattery were rescued by fire-fighters and RSPCA volunteers when rescue crews returned to the charred site on Saturday afternoon.

Earlier this week business owner Paul Hicks told ABC Radio he and his wife were devastated at losing their business and the animals that suffered in the fire.

“It’s been a busy day today answering calls and Facebook messages and trying to update people with what’s happening,” he said.

“It’s my wife’s passion and she loved the customers and all the animals … it’s just awful.

“We’re trying to come to terms with what has happened to us.”

Critics are calling for the RSPCA to charge the owners.

The support page has amassed thousands of likes.

With not much of a business left to promote, the boarding service’s social media site had become a forum for promoting hate or support for the business, with disgusted animal lovers saying the owners acted irresponsibly by failing to evacuate the animals and abandoning them in the blaze.

The Tea Tree Gully’s most prominent online presence is now shared between two pages.

Hate group “Let’s Sue Tea Tree Gully Kennel” demanding consequences for the owners which has attracted just 400 likes, while “Lets support Tea Tree Gully Boarding and Cattery”, which has amassed close to 10,000 supporters.

While angered haters have taken to the hate group and left reviews on the business’s automated page calling for charges, owners of animals, both surviving and lost, have taken to the each page asking for the backlash to stop.

“I may have lost my dog at the kennels still waiting for news and I do not blame anyone I know that they did everything they could possibly do. My thought are with them and their family and everyone else like myself affected by this horrible event,” Mark Turner wrote.

“Keep your negative comments to yourself.”

Gaye Howe, who said she lost her pet, asked people to “please stop making hostile armchair judgments”.

Paracombe and Tea Tree Gully CFS rescue dogs from the Tea Tree Gully Boarding Kennel and Cattery. Pic: Dylan Coker

A spokesman for RSPCA told news.com.au the organisation’s focus was currently on recovery efforts, and any possibility of charges would be considered in a review process.

“We don’t have any information about whether we’d be looking into that at this stage. At this stage we’re focusing on the bushfire and recovery effort,” he said.

The RSPCA has been assisting the Country Fire Service in rescuing animals and retrieving remains in affected areas across the state, including at Tea Tree Gully.

“We were called in to assist in the transport of some deceased dogs to the animal welfare facilities,” the spokesman said.

Pictured back at the Paracombe CFS Station Captain Darryl Hutchins with the dog Gus he saved with mouth to mouth after finding it twitching after he found that his own dogs had perished in the adjoining room. Picture Dylan Coker

Originally published as South Australia bushfires: Calls to charge owners of Tea Tree Gully Boarding Kennel and Cattery