PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — Feels-like temperatures in the triple digits have been baking South Florida for days, and it's not just people feeling the heat. Even local animal shelters are struggling to keep up.
WATCH BELOW: 'Our shelter is built to house 148 dogs. Just this morning, it was 170,' Capt. Daisy Blakeman tells WPTV
Inside Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control, there's no traditional air conditioning in the kennels—just large chillers and a series of fans working around the clock to keep hundreds of dogs comfortable.
The shelter, which is only built to house 148 dogs according to the shelter's operations manager, is currently caring for far more than that.
"Our shelter is built to house 148 dogs. Just this morning, it was 170—and that's on the low side," said Capt. Daisy Blakeman, the shelter's operations manager.
Blakeman said the summer heat has made an already difficult situation worse. Dogs are staying at the shelter longer—an average of more than a month—while new animals arrive daily.
The kennels rely on chillers rather than full air conditioning. While the system helps, it can only do so much.
"It doesn't get icy cold like it would in an office," Blakeman said. "But it does keep it cool enough for the dogs to be fairly comfortable and for our staff to work comfortably."
To offset the aging chillers, the shelter uses fans throughout the building, but Blakeman says even that has its limits.
"If we add more fans, it actually trips the breaker and it stops running," Blakeman explained.
Meantime the current chillers need to be updated and renting new ones won't come cheap, it'll will run the shelter $30,000 a month, relief is on the horizon, though—the county expects to break ground on a new facility next year.
"That will come with true air-conditioning in all of our animal areas," Blakeman said.
For now, staff are resorting to old-school tactics to keep the animals safe.
"We don't allow dog walking after noon time. We provide pools—sometimes we'll ice them down, just bring out buckets of ice," Blakeman said.
The shelter has issued a public call for help, asking residents to adopt or foster—even if it's from other shelters.
"If they are able to empty their kennels, they'll take some of ours," Blakeman said.
With South Florida's dangerous heat lingering, staff say every adoption or foster home helps give animals a cooler, safer place to wait for their forever families while reducing the burden on local rescues and shelters.
