By Carole Raphaelle Davis Photo by Stumberg - U.S. Navy, courtesy of SDF
The Earthquake
On January 12, a catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti, killing 230,000 people. Hours later, as innumerable victims lay trapped inside collapsed buildings, alive and crying out for help, a team of American "first responders" were loading up onto a C-17 military aircraft at March Air Force Base in Riverside, California. They were flying to Port-Au-Prince to rescue people who were buried alive in the wreckage. They took enough equipment and supplies with them to be fully self-sustainable in a disaster zone for 14 days.
After an earthquake, there are just a few days to pull people out of the rubble before they die of injuries and dehydration. Certain members of this highly trained disaster response team have extraordinary life-saving skills and innate abilities that exceed those of humans "”and these heroes are dogs.
The Team and their dogs
These highly skilled search dogs are the pride of the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization based in Ojai, California. The foundation's mission is to strengthen disaster response by recruiting rescued dogs and partnering them with firefighters and other first responders to find people buried alive in the wreckage of disasters. Not only does SDF assist in rescuing humans; they rescue dogs as well. The organization rescues dogs from euthanasia in the shelter system and trains them to rescue people by using the dogs' acute sense of smell to detect live victims. SDF ensures lifetime care for every dog in its program. "Once rescued," says Wilma Melville, founder of SDF, "these dogs never need to be rescued again."
The earthquake destroyed Haiti's already fragile infrastructure, leaving its people with no Internet or phone service. As Debra Tosch, executive director of SDF, waited anxiously for news, she sent me one of the very first text messages from her team. In few words, it showed how strenuously the dogs worked and how heart-wrenching the conditions were for their handlers: "Hunter has searched hard today, last building lots of dead. He kept searching, can't stop that dog. Stepping over bodies, crawling as far as 40 feet under floors, 18 inches apart. He is amazing. We are giving the dogs IV fluids to prevent dehydration. Very hot today."
I spoke with first responder Jasmine Segura about her rescue mission in Haiti and her SDF dog, Cadillac. "Our team rescued nine people and that was amazing," she told me. "I feel a sense of accomplishment"¦but all the training we do could never compare to Haiti." Jasmine recounted how Cadillac had assisted in a "live find" by alerting her team to a person trapped underneath a collapsed building.
"I was in the hole," Jasmine explained, "and when we have a confirmed victim, we have to start digging to get to them using power tools"”moving debris and breaking rocks. We had power tools to move a bunch of rebar, and then we were able to communicate with this woman who was in a void space within a pancake structure. We dropped water through a hole three feet deep on the sixth day after the earthquake. She was saved with her sister. She was able to stick her hand through and then she stuck her whole face through and gave us gave us this great smile."
The elation Jasmine felt at being able to pull the woman out alive contrasted with the horror all around her, including piles of cadavers, anguished people, and starving, stray animals. "The saddest thing was having this little girl, around eight years old, asking for water," said Jasmine. "I couldn't give it to her because it would create a mob scene. "
I asked Jasmine how they kept the dogs hydrated while they were working in front of crowds of people who had not had any water in days. "We had to go in spots where we could drink, hiding," said Jasmine. "Remembering those kids who needed water... I'll never get those images out of my mind." Jasmine had to keep Cadillac from getting distracted and focus the dog's concentration on the job of finding people alive. "We had one woman who was mourning very loudly and Cadillac was twisting his head," she recalled. "I had to pull out peanut butter and 'unlock' him from that"”just to get his mind off the crying."
Captain Ron Horetski of the L.A. County Fire Department, brought Pearl, his black lab. "I feel good about what the task force did down there," Ron told me. Proud of the work Pearl did in Haiti, Ron described their intense working relationship: "I put her through direction control and she was flawless," he said. "We're great together. Down in Haiti, she got in areas where I never could imagine her going"”confined spaces, walking through bodily fluids to finish a search through a building. She got in there and I lost sight of her. I'm six-foot-six and I couldn't get in there. When there's no alert, she sits next to me and that means we gotta continue on."
I asked Ron how he kept Pearl safe while working in danger of severe aftershocks shifting the buildings. "I'm always concerned about her," he said. "She did cut her foot, but the way the dog walks so fast over material, even if they step on glass they're still gonna walk"”she's my partner. It's my decision as a dog handler, but then again we have a job to do and that job is finding life."
In a difficult team effort, the search dogs found life under a collapsed building"”three little girls. "Of the three girls, tragically, one of them died before she could get out," lamented Deborah Tosch of SDF. "Some of these victims are 40 feet down, under heavy slabs of concrete. It was a five-minute search for Hunter (the search dog) and then a six-hour operation for the task force to save the person. The dogs help find them, but [rescuing them] takes the whole team."
The right dog + the right handler + training = "live finds"
Wilma Melville described how SDF dogs think, train and work, hunting for live human scent: "The handler uses good judgment and directional control with sound and arm signals. [The dogs] are trained to go back or forward with arm signals. They're having the greatest time of their life; it's what they love to do. That's the beauty of the dog. The handler is trained, the dog is connected to the handler, and the handler must be upbeat in order for the dog to do his job. The whole world could be collapsing, but the handler must remain cheerful with his body and his voice. A handler has to separate from it. He has to say to the dog, "˜Come on, we're going to have a good time here!' "
Says Jasmine Segura of her dog Cadillac, "Even though he doesn't get it like a human, he has the confidence and the training. He would go anywhere I ask him to. We're on a three-story top on a catwalk"¦I'm the thinker for that dog. Sometimes the risk is too much. When I can't see, I have to rely on his instincts. But these dogs will do everything we ask them to do. They feel comfortable ranging out into tunnels on their own. We let their noses work, and we don't micromanage them on the pile. They're here because we can't see what we're looking for."
How does a search dog distinguish between a live person and a dead body?
"With advanced training," says Wilma Melville, "we begin to show the dog other scents, like human tissue. We use blood, hair, and, if we can, we get [human] placenta." Gruesome as it sounds, the Search Dog Foundation needs more than just monetary donations; they need body parts. Wilma told me that when she had a hip replacement, she insisted that the doctor give her a portion of the hip: "Come on! It's just a bone! It's in a jar in a bag."
She told me how difficult it is to get human parts. "It doesn't take a whole body," she said flatly. "Parts of bodies are just fine. We draw blood"”we put it on cotton. We teach the dog not to do a bark alert at just blood. These dogs can discriminate between minute things"”like an amazing nose on four legs. While we just smell stew, they smell all the different ingredients. We think we're so damn smart and we don't give the dog enough credit."
"We need body parts," admitted Debra Tosch. "A member of the local search and rescue had a baby and I asked for the placenta. She gave it to us. A staff member had a knee replacement, and she gave us her knee. The job of these dogs is not to alert on bodies; that's a cadaver dog's job."
The remarkable heart of the foundation's work is rescuing dogs who will be trained to rescue people. "A family buys a puppy Golden [retriever] and it's fuzzy and cute," says Wilma Melville, explaining how SDF rescues suitable candidates for their program from the shelter system. "They love the cute ball of fur and as he grows, he becomes tremendously energetic and constantly wants to do something"”he never stops bothering them. He'll run around and pick up the socks, dig up the yard, chews on shoes ... and the dog becomes a pest. So they dump him in a shelter. We need dogs that are high-energy, with high drive and a great ability to focus.
We look for athletic ability, boldness"”not a little shy thing. If we have those characteristics all in the same dog, we'll have a fine disaster search dog. It's heartwarming to take a dog that is headed for euthanasia," she adds. "Many of them have a day before they're euthanized. I see that as the biggest waste in our country. But we're taking a dog that has been thrown on the trash heap, and we are productively using his best characteristics."
Tosch was moved when I told her The American Dog was interested in the story of rescued dogs rescuing people. She became genuinely emotional when she spoke to me about the adversity the SDF dogs have overcome. "The fact that we have rescued dogs rescuing humans is just so rewarding for me," she said. "These dogs are minutes away from being euthanized, or they've been abused, and the fact that they can go out and save the same species that got them into that situation is amazing."
As Haiti rebuilds and its people recover, these canine heroes stand ready to save more lives.
For more information on the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation or to donate, please visit their web site: www.searchdogfoundation.org.
