Phone Book Mistake Messing Up Rescue Services

Their job is to come to the rescue when people are in trouble, but lately the Chattanooga Hamilton County Rescue Squad is getting a lot of calls to help animals in distress.  If you need help with a dog or cat in your neighborhood, you'll probably look up animal rescue in the phone book.  But, the number listed is actually for help getting people to safety.

The new phone book is out, and on page 22, there's a mistake that could mess up emergency rescues.  President J.C. Thompson says, "The yellow pages put us the rescue squad under animal rescue and we do not do animal rescue."

The Chattanooga Hamilton County Rescue has been backing up response to dangerous scenes for 70 years.  But this year, they're listed under animal rescue, instead of those needing help for humans.  "Try to clear it up with the public that we're not in the animal rescue we're in the people rescue."

But Thompson says the typo has tied up their phone lines.  He says almost every call they've gotten since the phone book was released, has been for help with four legged friends, instead of those with two.  "The messages that have been coming in, about 90 percent of them are dog or cat rescue or something is wrong with our animal."

Thompson says they can't figure how the misprint happened.  We called the Yellow Pages for an explanation, but never heard back.  "We did not solicit an ad in the yellow pages so consequently, we don't know how it got set up that way."

If you do need help with an animal rescue, call the McKamey Center if you live in the city, and the Humane Educational Society if you live in the county.

McKamey Animal Center can be reached at 305-6500.  Humane Educational Society's phone number is 624-1754.