A dog has been found alive and in good shape after spending eight days trapped in the rubble of a Breckenridge building that exploded.
Lulu, a springer spaniel, was rescued Sunday after the owner of the building heard her whimpering.
The dog’s owner, Brian Mislanski, was critically injured in the April 19 explosion.
“I’m happy,” he told The Associated Press on Tuesday from St. Anthony Central Hospital in Denver. He declined to comment further, but friends who are caring for Lulu said they took her to visit Mislanski with permission from the hospital.
The hospital said it couldn’t discuss Mislanski’s injuries or condition.
Attorney Michael Burg, who represents Mislanski, said his client underwent additional surgery Tuesday after earlier having a portion of one leg removed below the knee because of injuries he suffered in the blast.
“He was standing in front of the mirror shaving when the next thing he knew was all hell broke loose,” Burg said. “This is obviously a very, very sad situation with a young man in the prime of his life who is now going to be disabled. He is an amazing young man who is fighting his way through the best he can.”
Investigators with Red, White and Blue Fire Rescue, insurance companies and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation continue to look for the cause of the explosion and are running tests centering on propane tanks, Burg said.
“At this point in time, we are waiting for answers as to what the cause is,” Burg said. “Basically the building collapsed around him. It is a miracle he survived at all.”
Breckenridge veterinarian Christine Murphy said Lulu suffered mild dehydration and had some trauma to her left eye. Murphy said she probably survived by drinking melting snow and eating food she found in the debris.
The building housed Good Times Adventures, a snowmobiling and dog-sledding business. Mislanski is a van driver for the business and at the time of the explosion was house-sitting for managers who lived in an apartment in the building.
Fire officials said Tuesday it could be a week or two before the cause of the explosion is known. They did not believe it was intentional or criminal.
Good Times owner Brian Holt said he was sorting through about 6,000 square feet of rubble from the explosion when he heard Lulu.
“We turned off the radio and started calling out Lulu’s name. Then we heard some yelping,” he told the Summit Daily News in Tuesday’s editions. “After 45 minutes of frantic digging, we found her laying in a crawl space under 15 feet of rubble,” he said. “She basically had a two-story building on top of her.”
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error it misspelled the name of attorney Michael Burg.
