Search and Rescue Dogs in New York

By Pat Ivey
Blytheville Courier News

Most people across the country have spent hours in front of their televisions during the weeks since Sept. 11, watching as heroic rescue and search personel sifted through the rubble of the Pentagon and the World Trade Center hoping to find still-living victims of those tragedies.

Unfortunately, amid the trained and dedicated personel who responded to these areas were some less-than-heroic folks who, while their intentions may have been noble, endangered themselves, the victims they were searching for and the other workers around them because of their lack of training.

According to Kathy Arnold, K-9 handler for the Blytheville Emergency Squad, not responding to the search at the World Trade Center when other handlers she knew were being dispatched was a very hard thing to do.

While Arnold and her K-9 partner Retten have been training as an Urban K-9 Search and Rescue team for just such an emergency, the pair have not completed the training and certification process required to be part of an official response team.

"My dog is not certified," Arnold said. "He has not met the qualifications."

Retten is certified in tracking and is an experienced wilderness and building search and rescue dog. He and Arnold have been actively working for months under the instruction of Bill Dotson, owner-operator of Canine Solutions International in Ruckersville, Virginia, and one of the developers of the training and certification process for dogs assigned to Federal Emergency Management Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) teams.

"My dog has been in training since 8 weeks of age, he is now 2 yrs old," Arnold explained. "We have been tested at the preliminary level to prove that we have the potential to successfully complete the certification process.

"I was not deployed by an agency because we have not reached certification as of this date. I did not self deploy because I feel very strongly that K9 handler teams should have been tested and obtained certifications prior to being used in a real life situation. Victims trapped in rubble, deserve to have a team that has proven to be 110 percent ready for the mission. As of this time myself and my dog have not met this goal and I would rather not deploy than to go to a disaster and be a possible liability to the victim. Victims deserve to have dogs that have proven to be realiable searching on rubble, so that no live victim is missed when a search area has been covered."

A number of search dog handlers who were not trained for urban search did "self deploy" to the World Trade Center site, according to Tim Fisher of the New York State Police.

"We experienced numberous problems with non-trained canines working the site," Fisher said. "When they were exposed they were removed. Several returned home and made false claims of fiinding bodies and live persons. I have tried to refute those claims, as I am personally upset by this development."

Dotson, whose training facility is the only business in the U.S. which trains dogs and handlers to USAR specifications, said his group did not accept deployment to the World Trade Center site because the urgency of the situation had ended by the time they were offered the opportunity to deploy.

He explained that when the possibility of finding living victims no longer existed, he determined conditions at the World Trade Center site were too dangerous to risk his dogs and handlers to perform searchs for non-living victims.

"There was a huge risk to dogs and handlers," he said. Dotson was in touch with government officials during the search and rescue activities, and said he was told by those sources that at least two dogs, both law enforcement trained, were taken onto the search site even though they had not been specifically trained for urban disaster search.

As a result, serious and even horrifying breaches of crime scene preservation occured as a result of actions of those dogs. "They had not been trained for those conditions," Dotson said. There are no national legal standards for urban search and rescue dogs, Dotson explained, and that is part of the problem.

"If a man believes his dog can find people, he can present himself as qualified with little or no training," he said. He likened the situation to the old west, where barbers could also practice medicine because no legal standards existed for physicians.

The determining factor for canine search response, he said, should be whether the dog and the handler have put in the two years or so of consentrated, physically and mentally challenging training to handle the specific conditions presented by that particular search. In the case of urban disaster, the type of situation which existed at both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, the dogs and handlers responding should have recieved that specific training in responding to a major building collapse, training included in the USAR regimin.

"A disaster dog handler is a strange beast," Dotson said. "They train hard and intensely to prepare for one or two weeks of disaster work during the life of their dog."

Cathy Schiltz is a member of Missouri Task Force One, and she and her FEMA certified disaster dog Hawk were deployed almost immediately after the incidents of Sept. 11 occured.

Hawk is an 8 year old Australian Shepherd and has been certified since 1998 in Urban Search and Rescue. He is also crossed trained to locate victims who are no longer living.

Schiltz and Hawk were deployed at noon on Sept. 11, and arrived in New Jersey via military transport early Wednesday morning. They were then bussed to NYC and began searching at about 2 a.m. Thursday morning. They were in New York City for 11 days, returned home on Sept 21.

They did not locate any survivors during that time, but Hawk was successful in helping to recover bodies, specifically the remains of the firefighters and police officers that had arrived at the scene before the collapse, and were burried as the 110-story buildings fell.

"Hawk worked hard those 11 days; there were times that we had to get him off the pile and out of sight, just so he could rest," Shiltz said. "We were sad that there were no live finds but happy that we could be of service so that the families could have some closure."

Shiltz said she had to modify the way she worked with Hawk because of the specific conditions which existed at ground zero, but that didn't seem to be a problem for the highly trainied and experienced dog. "I think the very strong foundation that I had laid in his training was very helpful; he never balked when I asked him to search and kept working throughout our deployment."

Diane Wiestle's border collie Sage was at the Pentagon, but without Wiestle. Wiestle and Sage are members of New Mexico Task Force One. "On the Sunday before the attack, I was in a horseback riding accident," Wiestle explained. "As a result,I had broken ribs and a collapsed lung. Needless to say, I wasn't going anywhere."

Wiestle's partner had also gone through the training and certification process with Sage, and when the time came for deployment to the Pentagon, Sage was deployed with Wiestle's partner.

Wiestle also said the training and certification process administered as part of the USAR program is necessary for all searches involving collapsed buildings and urban disaster situations, not only to save the lives of victims, but to protect the lives of the handlers and their canine partners.

"A Disaster K-9 must be trained to an environment that is totally different than what they see in everyday life," she said. "A disaster dog is going to be exposed to smells of chemicals, burns, decomposing food and human remains.They need to learn to walk slowly and cautiously, and when they jump, they need to land like a cat."

Wiestle explained that when they land on something that is unstable, the untrained dog will begin to quiver and cause the object to move even more. A trained disaster dog that lands on an unstable object has been taught to lower his center of gravity by crouching low until the object stabilizes.

"A dog can crash 50 feet to their death on a rubble pile if the don't learn how to maneuver over unstable, slippery surfaces safely through training for this unusual environment," she said. "Instead of gripping the earth with their claws, they need to learn to keep the claws retracted, using their full pad for traction. These are just some of the different skills needed for a disaster K-9."

The search element is about the same for all search and rescue dogs, she said: find the victim and alert. FEMA requires a sustained, or continuous, bark alert so that the handler can pinpoint the location of the victim.

The urban search dog must stay with the victim, she explained. A wilderness dog is generally trained for a refind, which means the dog, traveling sometimes as much as a mile ahead of the handler, finds the lost individual and then returns to the handler and leads them back to the victim.

Even the best trained, most experienced wilderness dog becomes a liability for himself and the victim if the structure is unstable and the dog is running on and off the rubble, she explained. "This dog could possibly cause further collapse of the structure."

FEMA K-9 handlers go to CSS (Canine Search Specialist) school as well as training their dogs, Wiestle said. Handlers learn about the skills needed for proper K-9 handling, and are taught to work side by side with the rest of the FEMA team.

People not trained in proper FEMA procedures can endanger other workers, she said. "They may not know some of the basics, like one long blast of the horn means cease ops/quiet, one long and one short blast means resume work, three blasts means evacuate the area! Get out as fast as you can!" Handlers also recieve hazardous materials awareness training, decontamination procedure training and specific instruction on equipment and uniforms.

There are currenty 400 search and rescue dog units in the U.S., Dotson said, and not every one of them recieves the appropriate level of training.

"They say, 'after all, any dog is better than no dog,'" Dotson said. "That's not true. If a poorly trained dog goes into a patch of woods, and doesn't find anyone, then the authorities think that woods has been searched and they don't go back in. People should keep in mind that what they are going to do with their dog, and their quality of performance, may determine whether a person lives or dies. They've got to take it seriously. People are not taking this seriously enough."

Anyone wishing to know more about search and rescue dogs, and the training required for that discipline, may contact Dotson by email sarbill@aol.com.

** Photo at top of page, courtesy of Federal Emergency Managment Agency (FEMA)