The San Diego Union-Tribune
Stella’s pink tongue hangs out of her mouth, her tail wags furiously, her demeanor is as friendly as any other black Labrador retriever.
But the life of this obedient 3-year-old ball of energy is decidedly more complex than most other canines.
Stella is from the Ojai-based nonprofit National Disaster Search Dog Foundation. She and her handler, firefighter Matt Kirk, work with the La Mesa Fire Department and are part of the Urban Search and Rescue California Task Force 8 team.
Kirk, 29, was teamed with Stella in March 2009 and had been training with her since then for the Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency certification test, which she easily passed last month in Tennessee.
Like all Search Dog Foundation recruits, Stella has spent most of her life training to seek survivors in a disaster. These dogs, often rescued from shelters and provided free of charge by the foundation, are put through thousands of hours of training with their handlers.
The dogs are taught to crawl through tunnels, walk over wobbly surfaces and climb atop rubble, all while ignoring distractions, focusing on the job at hand and using their sense of smell to find survivors.
“These dogs and their handlers (are) an important resource for saving lives locally, statewide and nationally,” said Chief Mike Scott of Heartland Fire & Rescue.
The San Diego County contingent, currently five teams strong, has sent members to Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and to New York after the World Trade Center attacks. There are 28 other teams in the United States that are available during a crisis.
Closer to home, the Task Force 8 teams have searched for survivors after a bluff collapse at Torrey Pines and after the major mudslides on Mount Soledad.
Several members, including Stella and Kirk, showed off their skills last week at the Heartland Fire & Rescue center in El Cajon, where East County agencies train.
“The only thing these dogs are alert to is to find a live, buried person,” said Scott, who recently retired his search and rescue dog, a black Lab named Billy, after eight years.
Sniffing through concrete slabs and other assorted rubble, Stella barked at Kirk when she found El Cajon Fire Capt. Steve Swaney, who had buried himself for the demonstration.
Her effort at the demonstration was stellar, but that wasn’t a surprise to Kirk.
“There were two piles of rubble at the test, one with limited access, one with full access,”Kirk said. “Stella was able to find two victims with two distractions during limited access and then she alerted on three victims with full access. She found them all within 20 minutes.”
By Karen Pearlman, Union-Tribune Staff Writer