The actors were positioned in safe locations beneath the rubble, and the dogs narrowed their sites down to a couple of feet, says Glenn Cooper, MUSAR Team Commander. The Search and Rescue K9s use their acute olfactory sense, estimated to be 100,000 times greater than humans, to detect the presence of trapped people in the rubble. The volunteer handlers and their dogs were involved in a training scenario where casualty actors were trapped in collapsed buildings following a catastrophic 7.5 earthquake. “To be imbedded with an Urban Search and Rescue team and learn how best to use the K9 resource in a training scenario provides invaluable learning opportunities,” said Berben. Richard Berben, a retired firefighter and VISDDAC president, says the first-ever opportunity to work alongside CAF members in such a scenario is crucial to his team’s training for a real-life disaster. Photo: Peter Mallett/LookoutĪ team of internationally certified rescue dog handlers has completed their first training exercise with the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF).įour handlers and K9s from Vancouver Island Search and Disaster Dogs Association of Canada (VISDDAC) worked with 25 members of CFB Esquimalt’s Medium Urban Search and Rescue (MUSAR) team in the weeklong exercise at Work Point at the beginning of June. VISDDAC Dog Handler Jeanette VanDijk and dog Phoenix, a Lab mix, take part in a MUSAR training exercise at Work Point, May 31.
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