Duan Chuan-ren (段傳仁) was one of the local volunteers participating in the rescue work following the September 21, 1999 earthquake, which was the most catastrophic temblor to hit Taiwan in the past century. During the time he helped search for trapped victims in several areas of Nantou County, central Taiwan, he came to realize the pressing need for search and rescue (SAR) canines in responding to natural disasters. “[We] found that some bodies dug out five days after the quake were still warm,” Duan recalls. “This indicates that a botched rescue operation led to their death, not the earthquake.”
Before the calamity, Duan had trained watchdogs for several years and had heard about how SAR canines can be helpful in finding disaster victims. Based on his understanding of canine behavior and firsthand experience in rescue operations for the 921 Earthquake, Duan believed more lives could have been saved at the time if Taiwan had possessed a sufficient number of dogs trained and designated for SAR work.
For that reason, soon after the earthquake, Duan began training SAR dogs in addition to his regular workload as the owner of a dog-training school in Nantou. Meanwhile, criticism of the country’s disaster management capabilities also prompted the central and local governments to begin setting up SAR teams as part of local fire departments and recruiting SAR canines to strengthen their emergency preparedness.
In 2000, the Taipei City Fire Department set up the Taipei City Urban Search and Rescue Team (USRT)—Taiwan’s first designated SAR team. The country’s first canine SAR group was formed under the USRT with four dogs purchased from the United States the same year. Other government agencies soon followed suit. Currently, five government departments around the country have their own canine SAR teams, including the Kaohsiung City Government’s Fire Bureau, New Taipei City Government’s Fire Department, Pingtung City Government’s Fire Bureau and the central government’s National Fire Agency (NFA) under the Ministry of the Interior.
The USRT’s Chung Chin-lung directs an SAR dog to walk over a moving plank resting on two barrels as part of the dog’s agility training. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
For rescue personnel, SAR dogs are an important component of SAR operations. That is unlikely to change, as the service they provide is nearly impossible to replace with high-tech life-detection devices. “SAR dogs are the fastest way of finding survivors in a large-scale search,” says Chung Chin-lung (鍾金龍), a member of the USRT, who currently trains and handles two SAR dogs. Chen Shun-tien (陳順天), a squad leader in the Special Search and Rescue Team (SSRT) under the NFA, explains that trained dogs increase the efficiency of the SAR process as their sharp sense of smell can quickly narrow down the search area. “After particular areas are specified, the SAR crew then uses search instruments, such as sound detectors, thermal detectors and image detectors, to locate victims and begin to dig,” Chen says. He adds that with the help of canine partners, a team can save a great deal of time and effort, and hence more lives.
Duan points out that SAR dogs have an edge over all other kinds of life detectors in that they can work in an active and independent manner. “All the other devices have to be carried and operated by rescue personnel,” he says. Echoing Duan’s comments, Chung says that a well-trained SAR dog can perform search work unaccompanied at dangerous sites such as collapsed buildings or landslide areas, but at the same time can follow its handler’s directions from a distance.
Unlike mechanical equipment, however, raising and training an SAR canine is a time-consuming process that takes a large amount of money and effort. Chou Tsung-chi (周聰吉), an SSRT member and a dog trainer and handler, estimates that it takes nearly NT$1 million (US$33,000) to rear an SAR dog. The costs include labor, dog food, veterinary care and access to training facilities, he says.
Chung says that canine trainers begin their work long before formal training sessions in order to help shape the dogs’ personalities. For example, trainers handle the puppies a lot and spend a great deal of time with them to help them build a strong sense of security, he explains. In addition, the dogs are exposed to various surroundings early on so as to enhance their adaptability to all types of environments. “These include warm, hot and cold objects, as well as surfaces that are slippery or rough,” Chung adds.
From left, Chan Tien-wen, Lin Chian-jr, Chen Shun-tien and Tsai Pai-hsiu of the NFA’s Special Search and Rescue Team pose with their canine partners. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
The young dogs can begin obedience training with simple commands such as come, sit and stay as early as three months old. Trainers observe a dog’s development until it is around 1 year old to decide if it is a good candidate for rescue work before SAR training begins. It takes at least one year of training for a dog to pass the test set up by the International Rescue Dog Organization (IRO), Chung says. The IRO is a worldwide umbrella organization consisting of 111 national rescue dog groups from 38 countries, including Taiwan. According to the SSRT’s Chen, the IRO test is the most widely recognized standard in Taiwan and is used to qualify canines for deployment in disaster situations. Dogs must be at least 18 months old before they are eligible to take the IRO exam.
Another challenge of using SAR canines is that their performance can be affected by weather, other environmental conditions or even their emotions. “When the weather is hot, for example, 10 minutes is about the maximum time they can concentrate on searching,” Chung says. Tsai Pai-hsiu (蔡百修), another SSRT member and canine trainer and handler, explains that the most comfortable temperature for dogs is around 15 degrees Celsius. Ensuring that the dogs take breaks during an SAR operation is essential not only for the animals to recover their physical strength, but also for them to retain their drive and desire to continue working.
A canine SAR team from Taiwan’s SSRT participates in rescue work for the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia. (Photo Courtesy of Special Search and Rescue Team)
High Play Drive
Currently, the two most popular breeds for SAR work in Taiwan are German shepherds and Labradors, although SAR canines can be any breed or mix. Trainers look for certain characteristics, however, when selecting the most suitable candidates. “Adaptability and a high play drive are the two main things to look for,” Chung says. He adds that since SAR canines are trained by using a system of positive reinforcement involving food treats and play, a potential SAR dog has to be healthy, love to play and have a great desire to work for rewards. “In plain language, training SAR canines is like playing hide-and-seek with the dogs,” Chung says.
Tsai notes that SAR dogs require daily training and his team puts its canine partners through their paces for roughly four hours every day. “For them, the so-called ‘training’ is actually playing. So, of course they want to play every day,” Tsai explains. The daily activity is a must for dogs that have a strong desire to work. Keeping the animals in their cages all weekend, for example, would foster boredom and anxiety, leading some of them to develop behavioral problems such as chewing on things they should not or attacking the other dogs when they are let out, Tsai says.
According to Chung, the typical training routine for an SAR dog mirrors the skills the dogs will be tested on during the IRO exam. Practice sessions are designed to improve a dog’s agility, obedience and search skills. They also include specialized skills such as crossing a horizontal ladder and an unstable beam, following commands from a handler at a long distance and finding people hiding in rubble.
A FEMA-certified SAR canine handler from the United States works with a USRT dog. The trainer was invited to Taiwan earlier this year to provide instruction to both human and canine members of the team. (Photo Courtesy of Taipei City Urban Search and Rescue Team)
Since a high degree of socialization is also a must for SAR dogs, trainers at the USRT sometimes take the canines to crowded places, such as street markets, to help them learn to be comfortable around people, noise and visual stimulation, Chung says. For the same reason, the SSRT keeps several other dogs to act as “distractions” during formal training so that the working dogs learn to focus solely on the task at hand.
To keep the dogs in optimal physical condition, the SSRT takes great care to provide a nutritionally balanced diet. The meals include beef, lamb, seasonal vegetables and a wide variety of supplements such as fish oil, ginseng powder, glucosamine and lecithin.
Trainers obtain most of their dogs by breeding SAR dogs in Taiwan or obtaining puppies with a good pedigree from reputable breeders abroad. This is done to reduce the risk that an adult dog will fail the training because its temperament is unsuitable for SAR work, an important consideration given the considerable time, cost and effort invested in raising SAR dogs.
At the same time, canine trainers, who often double as handlers, have to gain a thorough understanding of canine care, dog behavior and psychology, Tsai notes. Chung says that trainers often acquire such knowledge through workshops, independent study and the help of other trainers.
According to the SSRT’s Chen, 27 SAR canines in Taiwan have passed the IRO test. The dogs are most often deployed to search for missing persons in mountain areas and survivors trapped after an earthquake or landslide, Chung says. So far, domestic SAR dogs have participated in operations following some of the most serious disasters since Taiwan initiated the teams, such as those caused by Typhoon Nari in 2001, the March 31, 2002 earthquake and Typhoon Morakot in 2009. Canine SAR teams from Taiwan have also extended help to major rescue operations overseas, including the 2003 Bam Earthquake in Iran, the earthquake and tsunami of 2004 in Indonesia and the 2010 Haiti Earthquake.
A trainer gives SAR dogs a break during training so that the animals retain their strength and desire to work. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
Mixed Record
Unfortunately, so far, very few successful rescues have been credited to Taiwan’s SAR canines. Tsai, for example, has taken SAR dogs to search for missing persons in the mountains three times, but all of the victims were later found to have died. USRT member Huang Cheng-hui’s (黃正輝) most memorable SAR operation had a happier ending. In 2007, he took SAR dogs to an accident site about four hours after a sightseeing bus ran off the road and plummeted into a ravine on Yangming Mountain in northern Taipei. The canines searched the area for passengers that had been thrown from the bus and the wreckage for any survivors. They were able to signal that no one was alive in the vehicle before it was hoisted back to the road. “We later confirmed that the four missing persons we were looking for [were alive and] had already left the area,” Huang says. “But there was tremendous pressure on us to give a guarantee that there were no survivors [still in the bus].”
Chen believes the comparatively low number of successful cases has to do with the often delayed response to emergencies. For example, the SSRT was set up to provide additional support to all SAR operations around the country, but local governments usually do not apply to use the team’s canine services until they have exhausted all other options, Chen says. For this reason, rescue workers often miss the best chance of finding survivors, he says, because the dogs are not brought in until days after an accident. Duan says that there is an 80 percent chance of finding survivors if SAR dogs are deployed within 24 hours of a disaster, but the likelihood drops by 10 percent every eight hours after that.
An SAR canine and its handler are lowered on a cable during a training session designed to simulate deployment to a hard-to-reach search area. (Photo Courtesy of Taipei City Urban Search and Rescue Team)
Too Few Dogs
Then again, many rescue workers say there are still too few SAR dogs in Taiwan to provide a timely response to local emergencies. The SSRT’s Chou believes that eventually civilians will have to pitch in to raise and train SAR canines to reduce the shortfall. “Geographical proximity is key to the [successful] use of SAR canines,” Chou says. If disaster strikes, he adds, local citizens trained in SAR operations can arrive at the scene the fastest.
The USRT’s Chung questions if the time is ripe in Taiwan for civilians to train and handle SAR dogs, however, since no financial support is offered to private handlers who participate in rescue work with their canine partners. Duan, believed to be Taiwan’s only private trainer of SAR dogs, sometimes feels frustrated about the lack of financial support. He has raised and trained about a dozen SAR dogs and donated several of them to New Taipei City Government’s Fire Department during the past 10 years.
Pointing to the largely civilian canine teams used by the United States’ Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Duan hopes that Taiwan can set up a similar support system in order to encourage more individuals to train SAR dogs. FEMA requires canine and handler teams to pass the agency’s evaluation program, but the handlers for the agency’s canine squad are largely civilians and firefighters. If the agency activates a canine team, FEMA pays the handler for services rendered.
It is said that a crisis can be turned into an opportunity, and the idea of canine SAR teams was certainly one of the positive developments to emerge from the 921 Earthquake. For Taiwan, however, the training of SAR dogs is only the beginning and more must be done if they are to be used in a wider variety of rescue operations and in a timelier manner. As Duan points out, no rescue worker has an idea of how many trapped victims are alive or dead after a disaster, but SAR canines can offer great help if they are deployed quickly enough. “All we can do [in a rescue situation] is to never give up hope. To do so, we have to run a race against time,” he says. “In that case, SAR canines should be the first [resource] to be activated, not the last.”
Write to Audrey Wang at ycwang06@mofa.gov.tw