Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah K9 search and rescue team has been asked to train a team from Mexico on live recovery methods.
The Utah Task Force One is a specialized K9 search and rescue team that works through FEMA. The dogs that work on Utah Task Force One are highly trained in live recovery. They're trained in piles of rubble so that if an earthquake was to hit and buildings were to collapse they could find survivors right away.
Several of the dogs on Utah Task Force One on Monday showed just how good they are at live recovery. A member of the task force hid in the debris as if he were a victim trapped in a collapsed building, and each dog found him within minutes.
"They are so good at finding people in voids and finding live victims, when we get an alert from these dogs were a 99-percent sure somebody is there and still alive," said program manager Bill Brass.
Utah Task Force One will spend several days this week teaching their methods of live recovery to the team from Mexico. Brass said one reason they chose Utah was because of the similar terrain Salt Lake City has to Mexico City. Brass also said Mexico has similar earthquake potential and climate to Utah, and so it is an opportunity for both teams to swap ideas and learn new skills.
"You get different experience with different teams; the K9 managers train their dogs to pretty much the same standards but we all tweak it so we're all looking for those best practices and coming to Utah is just another opportunity," Brass said.
Each of the dogs on Utah Task Force One has received about $30,000 of training. One handler said sometimes the dogs train their whole lives and will never get called to a major disaster — but they have to be ready in case it happens.
