Trapped for Nine Days
The commander asks us to come to him, and we see that after digging another yard and a half in the rubble, they have reached two concrete slabs. At a crack in the middle, the dogs are scratching enthusiastically again. Someone is lying right beneath them. But we lack the heavy equipment to lift the concrete slabs. The only possibility is to try to dig alongside the slabs and from there make a shaft inside. It is a difficult job, but it has to be done. The salvage team is working again, and from above an Armenian is trying to contact the buried person, but he is not successful. Suddenly, luck is with us. After digging on the side of the rubble and pulling away a big piece of concrete, the rescue team enters a large hollow room and, through a small opening, into a shop under the apartments.
An approximately forty-year-old man is rescued. His eyes squint in the daylight when he is brought outside. For nine days he has kept himself alive with some vegetables and dripping rainwater. Immediately, nurses carry the man on a stretcher to the ambulance. He will survive!
Before we know what has happened, the ambulance is out of sight and the people around us take our hands and pat us on the shoulders. The Armenian people are grateful to us and the salvage team, and that feeling is intense. Even though they are not relatives, friends, or neighbors of the victim, they still thank us profusely for our help.
Austrian Army
As we walk back to where the police car was once parked, I suddenly see at a distance a man in a red jumpsuit. I think I am really dazed now and I have to pinch myself in my arm to be sure. For sure, there in the distance stand our Austrian colleagues. I yell over the rubble and our Austrian friends turn around, amazed to see us. When they recognize me their hands go up in the air and we walk in each other’s direction. The greeting is so exuberant that bystanders are looking at us in amazement. I find out that they are on a mission with their search and rescue dogs together with the Austrian Army. The Austrian Army has a tent camp on the grounds of the Polytechnic School in Leninakan. The commanding officer of the army, who is standing nearby, invites us to cooperate and to live in their camp. Then we can use their facilities and they can use our dogs. A very good deal! That same night we move to the Austrian camp with our whole group.
Friday: I hear that the Austrian Army has set up a coordination point in the center of Leninakan, where all requests for assistance are coming in. These requests will be sent by field telephone to our camp. We agree to work in three groups of search and rescue dogs: the Austrians with one group and us in two more groups. Coupled with every group are a complete army team of salvage workers with all the equipment, such as compressors and other salvage machines, a support group with equipment to catch sounds under the rubble, nurses, a physician, and a group-commander, who carries the walkie-talkie and maintains communication with the base camp. We’re transported in trucks and buses. This is efficient. As the groups are leaving, another group of soldiers is taking care of the toilets and the food. Later on we’ll be grateful for their preparation, because we will be working day and night!
Figure 9.7 We immediately reward the second dog for his good work. (Leninakan, Armenia, 1988)
Figure 9.8 Rescue came too late. When will authorities learn to send in well-trained search and rescue dog teams immediately? (Leninakan, Armenia, 1988)
Our first action together takes us to the partly collapsed telephone exchange of Leninakan. One person is still missing there. Our dogs do their work again, and they alert at two places. In one spot the body of the missing man is found, and in another spot the body of another employee is salvaged. She had not been mentioned as a missing person! On our way back we pass makeshift huts and shelters built by the roadside. People stay close to the rubble where their families and property still remain buried.
Around noon we go to a varnish factory, where our dogs search and locate. As a follow-up, we search a block of houses. An old man approaches us, showing us the picture of his daughter. In a corner both dogs give a passive alert. There they dig for her. In the meantime our dogs are already searching another house. There they also indicate the location of a buried victim and a block of houses a little farther on is a big place full of odor in a staircase. We also smell clearly the stench of dead bodies. The army commander tells me that the daughter has already been found in the corner the dogs were indicating and the same happened in the house next door. For the woman next door, the salvage also came too late.
Figure 9.9 Salvage also came too late for the woman in this coffin. (Leninakan, Armenia, 1988)
When we come back a little later, we are informed that they’ve already salvaged seven victims from staircase with the strong odor. And our dogs are indicating more. People often try to escape their houses but end up trapped in the stairwells. Some die immediately, but others may have lived for a long time, waiting to be saved. Rescue came too late this time. When will authorities finally learn that they have to bring in well-trained search and rescue dog teams quickly to a disaster? How many victims have to die before governments and emergency authorities understand the enormous value of carefully trained search and rescue dogs and their handlers? I blame the bureaucracy and the people who sit in their warm offices, far away from this harrowing grief, who decide who and what is going first to disaster areas. Yes, send a lot of blankets and medicine. However, I have seen airplanes full of these materials sitting at airports, because nobody takes the initiative to transport them further.
Victims who are waiting for rescue under the rubble do not need blankets. They are waiting for their salvage, and for that, only correctly trained search and rescue dogs are of value. They have to be given the first priority in reaching the disaster.