Success taking Fire Dept’s K9 units to the fore
They’re smart and adorable. But the dogs from the Fire and Rescue Department are trained for serious business - saving human lives and aiding fire investigations.
KUALA LUMPUR: The call of duty for four-legged personnel of the Fire and Rescue Department has been extended to Sabah and Sarawak.
By March, the department will have canine (K9) units in those states – a move that will add bite to its search and rescue operations, and fire investigations.
The animals are the underdogs of the department because little about them is known to the public, especially the roles they play.
But recent successes have helped bring the unit to the fore.
Six of these dogs and their handlers quickly located eight bodies in the aftermath of the landslide at a construction site in Tanjung Bungah, Penang, last month.
Four other dogs sniffed out a key clue – traces of petrol – at the scene of the tahfiz fire that killed 23 people in Selangor in September.
The department plans to increase the number of dogs from the cur- rent 17 to 28, said the K9 unit training division head Senior Assistant Fire Superintendent Pramnath Hariskisna.
“We will need 28 new dogs because 12 of our older dogs will have to be replaced.
“Sixteen will be sent to Sabah and Sarawak, eight for each state,” he said.
Of the eight, four will be trained to aid in fire investigations; two to sniff out dead bodies; and the remainder to find people lost in the wilderness.
K9 unit dogs are trained when they are 18 months old. After eight years in service, they are used to train new handlers.
The department has only one K9 unit base, in Old Klang Road, which covers operations nationwide.
Pramnath said the new branches in Tuaran, Sabah, and Serian, Sarawak, will be up and running by the time the dogs arrive.
He said the department is looking to recruit more dog handlers from among its firefighters.
It was decided that K9 units are needed in Sabah and Sarawak because locating victims after the earthquake that hit Kota Kinabalu in 2015 was tough without sniffer dogs, he said.
The dogs will help cut rescue response times and will be more suited in areas where the use of equipment is hampered.
handlers will first plan strategies and how the search will take place.
Then, when they reach the scene, it is the dog’s turn to work by using their noses. Dogs that find survivors or dead bodies will indicate to their handlers by barking from the location.
For searches in lakes and rivers, the dogs will be taken in boats to sweep the area to detect the rough location of the dead body. “They are able to sniff out the cadaver as the air above the spot would be different from other areas in the water.
“After the dog signals the location, rescuers will refine the search by diving within the radius,” Pramnath explains. However, it is impossible for dogs to locate cadavers at sea due to the salty water and d strongt currents. t
Fire investigation canines, meanwhile, have a different job – they are taught to trace the scent of chemicals commonly used by arsonists including petrol, lighter fluid and turpentine. The time taken for the dog to do its job varies according to the size and complexity of the mission. Pramnath says a burnt vehicle case is nor- mally quite straight forward – a dog can take less than five minutes to suss out the chemical.
Chemists and fire forensic officers will then identify the substance.
“Operations involving collapsed structures and landslides tend to be more complicated. The shortest time taken is less than half an hour,” he says.
Other factors also come into play, like the weather.
Just like humans, dogs can also be affected by heatstroke under the blazing Malaysian sun.
“The most they can be out in the heat is about 20 minutes,” Pramnath says.
In the 2010 Jaya Supermarket collapse in Petaling Jaya, the team took 15 minutes to locate all dead bodies, in a case Pramnath calls a “pancake” collapse where chances of survival are small.
A team of five handlers and their dogs also took less than 30 minutes to find all victims in the 2011 fatal landslide that hit an orang asli village in Cameron Highlands.
Their noble work has been recognised internationally as the unit, set up in 2002, is part of the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group and can be deployed to aid cases in other countries.
When the sirens are silent, handlers and canines still keep their hands (and paws) busy by continuing their training at the base.
Handlers also spend time with their four-legged colleagues by grooming, playing and exercising with them.
Fed once a day with dry food and supplements, the dogs must maintain an ideal weight so that they are always energetic.
Kept in individual kennels, each dog also has a separate space filled with sand, where they will be taken to pass motion and urinate at certain times of the day.
While they melt hearts with their adorable nature, some dogs can be stubborn and Pramnath says that is one of the main challenges for handlers.
“Handlers need to be very patient and keep repeating exercises to imprint them in the dogs’ mind.
“It’s tough because dogs don’t understand what humans are saying,” he says.
But if they could, Pramnath only wants to express his gratitude to these loyal creatures. “I want to tell them, ‘Thank you’. “They have dedicated their lives to saving so many human lives. And they have done such a good job.”