Speaker 1: You're listening to Petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Animaltopia on pet Life Radio. I'm your host,
Robert Simro. Thank you for joining us on today's show.
We will speak with a few whose efforts on nine
to eleven and after have had a tremendous impact. We
will speak with Alice Holmes from New Jersey Task Force One,
who along with her Live Find search and rescue dog,
was on the scene within hours searching the rubble. We
will also speak with John Valvardi from PA Recovery Dogs.
John was the assistant incident Commander for the K nine
Recovery Task Force at the Fresh Killed landfill on Staten
Island after the events of nine eleven. We will also
talk to noted author Nonah Kilgore Bauer, author of Hero
Dogs of nine to eleven, which chronicles seventy seven of
the search and rescue teams. She has recently updated the
book with more than one hundred pages of new information.
We'll be right back with Alice, John and Nona after
these messages from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: Sit stay, We'll be right back after a short pause.
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Speaker 10: Hi, this is Marcy Davis and my service dog Whistle,
and we're your hosts of Working Like Dogs on Petlike Radio.
Working Like Dogs is the show where you can learn
everything you've ever wanted to know about working animals or
working dogs. Whether you're a member of a working dog team,
or you've just seen a working dog or animal out
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about how these amazing animals work with their human partners.
Been Working Like Dogs is the show for you. Join
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Petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 3: Let's Talk pets on Petlife Radio dot com.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Animaltopia on pet Life Radio. We begin
by revisiting a day that changed the United States forever.
Nine to eleven is a day that will never be forgotten.
I can remember watching in terror and disbelief on that day.
In the hours and days that followed, I felt so
many different emotions and was glued to my television and
riveted by the stories of the incredible efforts to rescue
anyone still alive and then to recover those who had
been tragically lost so that their loved ones could have
some small sense of closure and certainty. I was moved
to terrors on many occasions as I listened to the
heart wrenching stories. I was also filled with tremendous pride
hearing about those who were there giving everything they had
for as long as they could. On this tenth anniversary,
I wanted to do my small little part to say
thank you to the estimated more than nine hundred and
fifty plus search and rescue teams that worked so hard
for such an important cause. The more than nine hundred
and fifty working teams were made up of civilian, government,
law enforcement, and military personnel who served in response to
the attacks of nine to eleven. I also want to
specially recognize and say thank you to the numerous other
animal teams, especially the therapy dogs who also worked so
tireusly for such a long time after nine to eleven
to help heal hearts and souls affected by this tremend
his tragedy. According to FEMA, the rescue and recovery effort
at the World Trade Center was the largest deployment of
search dogs in US history. Canine teams worked the various
sites for several weeks. There were some injuries, but most
were able to be treated on site, including lacerations and abrasions.
The dogs and their handlers made themselves available on call
for twelve hour shifts and often worked longer than that.
The only dog to lose his life on nine to
eleven was a yellow Labrador Retriever named Sirius. He worked
for the Port Authority as a bomb detection dog alongside
his sergeant partner, David Limb. Limb and Sirius were in
the basement of the South Tower when the North tower
was attacked. He put the four year old dog in
his kennel and left to check on the situation. Lim
told Sirius he would be back for him after he
checked on what was going on in the North tower,
but before lim could return, the South tower collapsed, followed
by the North tower. Lim was trapped on the fourth
floor with six firefighters and an injured woman. They were
all safely rescued five hours later. Lim did come back
for Sirius as he promised, but it was too late.
He continued to look for his partner until eventually, on
January twenty second, two thousand and two, the dog's remains
were uncovered. The Port Authority held a memorial service in
his honor and have since built a memorial at Battery
Park with a beautiful dog run. In addition the Finding One,
another organization is working hard to bring awareness to the
working dogs. The first Serious Courage Award will be presented
posthumously to Sergeant Zanaia K. Kramer, USA, the first woman
military working dog handler killed in combat in the history
of the United States. She died in Afghanistan on January twelve,
twenty eleven. It will also be presented posthumously to Petty
Officer first Class John Dungardia. Dungardia was killed along with
his canine partner Bart, in the attack on the Seal
helicopter in Afghanistan on August sixth, twenty eleven. That attack
also claimed the lives of twenty nine of their fellow
service members. The award is named after the only dog
to be killed at Ground Zero and will be presented
by his handler, Lieutenant Limb of the Port Authority Police.
As it's been a decade, many of the dogs that
performed so heroically on and after nine to eleven have passed.
We begin with Alice Holmes from New Jersey Task Force
Team one She and her dog named Chewbacca, were one
of the first teams to arrive at ground zero and
begin searching for survivors. Alice, thank you for all that you,
your dog, Chewbacca, and your team did on nine to eleven.
Walk us through the day as.
Speaker 10: You remember it.
Speaker 9: I was sitting at a college class at Rutgers University,
and at that time our team had pagers. So basically
we're sitting in a class. My pager goes off and
look canned. It actually has a print out and it says,
refert to lake her station. We're being deployed to WTC.
I didn't really recognize WGC them. It's an acronym, but
you know, you really didn't think of it that way,
and most people probably didn't. And the pager goes off again,
and he goes off again and it says, don't call,
just come whole. Teams being deployed. So jumped in my car,
left Rutgers University, which is in Brunswick, and headed down
the New Jersey Turnpike hopped off. I had called my husband.
He gathered up my gear and my dogs and my dog,
and through the back of my vehicle he looked at
me and said be careful. So I'm getting all this
information at the same time, I'm thinking I've got to
get light Hurst because our team has a two hour recall.
So I firstly made it there and lesson to two
hour recall. They checked this in, grabbed their bags for
them on vehicles, and we put our dogs into the
New Jersey Transit buses along with the rest of the
team and started driving to Round zero. And as we
got there, you could see I would say, I don't know,
got three close the way up the turnpike, all of
a sudden you could see New York and all you
saw was black smoke rising, and we're We're like, okay,
and then we're starting. Everybody's getting reports on their cell
phones and they get up there and our state police
are leading our way and they're trying to figure out
whether we're going to go over a bridge through a tunnel,
and they closed all of those, and so we kind
of drove around in a circle for a little while,
trying to figure out, you know, communicating with state police
how we're going to get into New York. They closed
all the accesses from New Jersey, so we finally got
in to the city and I think my most biggest memory,
biggest memory is walking down the street toward ground zero.
All the people seeing our team walk with our canines
that we have, our you know, very red backpacks, all
our helmets, asking us to find their loved ones, their
family members, worker co workers, showing us pictures. And this
is just after lunch, well what three or four hours
after the tower cell and asking us to do what
we can and thanking us for coming. And that was
very overwhelming. That was very I'm sitting there, We'll get
a thousands of these people thinking what am I going?
I'm one person, one person. My dog's walking along with
all these people in this crowd. He's never been to
New York City, and so he was just taking it
all in and I'm watching him and he's okay, he's excited.
I've got my gear, got my pants on, and he's public.
He's like, Okay, what am I doing? I know im
so I's be working. Where are we going? What are
we doing? You could see his and he These canines
steed off of our adrenaline. So when we're up, they're up.
When we get stressed, they can get stressed. So we
have to kind of be careful enough to feed them
too bad, and the stuff we tried, so we walked
off and and got briefed and we'll put right to work,
you know, especially the canon. And we stayed there till
probably that night, till three or four, on the campus
of the community college there right near ground zero, and
they're trying to decide whether they're taking us back to
the Javit Center or what we're doing. And then we
did load up and go back to the Javit Center
to get from downtime, got reached the next morning and
went back to ground zero, so we only got a
few hours of down time that night, and then we
split up into shifts, so we had two twelve hour shifts.
I happened to be on the day shift and then
the other half the team is on the night shift.
Speaker 2: So how big was the team.
Speaker 9: We had three teams, which are supposed to be sixty
two person teams each with each having four canons. And
I'm not sure that day exactly how many people arrived
at ground zero, but then other people who did get
to Lakehurst immediately. Then we're transported up later that day
and that night, so we have, thankfully did have the
whole team there at that time that it was probably
you know, higher and eighty people maybe, and that includes planning, logistics, rescue,
medical staff. We have doctors on the team. We have
a veterinarian on the team. So yeah, we have the
whole well basically self sufficient, and we're supposed to be
self sufficient for three days minimum with what we carry
in our gearbags.
Speaker 2: Share with us the thoughts that you were having as
you were first approaching the site.
Speaker 9: At that point, a lot of it. There was a
lot of smoke, still a lot of hot spot. I mean,
everything was hot. And I think the first time I
saw the pile. We train on robo piles, we train
on man made grobal piles. Sometimes we trained recycling facilities,
and there fairly small, maybe a size of a big house.
And I looked at that at ground zero and just
realized how enormous this fight was, and I almost questioned
my training. Am I ready for this? Because I looked
out over that and I'm like, where do we start?
And then that became evident. You start the moment you
stepped under the piles, and all the firefighters, all the
rescue people were there, especially with us with the dogs,
kept yelling I need a dog over here, could you
check this? And we were work from one place to
the next place to the next place, and we actually
had to ask them the dogs are looking for live
human spent. Well, if you've got one hundred people standing
around a hole in the ground where they want to
send dogs, all those people have hot human sent dogs
and excited adremine, still human spent. So we had to
say to you back up a little bit, could you
let the dut settle? And we were also amazed. The
other thing, there was no cement. We've been training on
pieces of cement, and when we got there it was
all white powder and girders, you know steel, so or
go to train you know, big slabs of cement and
gravel and rock. They're now walking along these beams that
have nothing attached to them. And so yeah, it was
we just basically started as say. As we got there,
we were given an area, go to work, do what
you can find, what you can work your dog. The
biggest thing is we really didn't get too much of
our opportunity to break our dog, because every time I
stopped searching one area, somebody would ask me to go
search another area. When you're asking, they're looking for live
people and that's a very time critical thing.
Speaker 2: So what was the most difficult.
Speaker 9: Part, the most typical part, I think having so much
that we were the dog sound. Our dogs are why
find dogs and they're looking for live human sense, and
in this situation, what they were finding was not alive.
And there was an enormous amount of human scent form
the pile with oll the rescue people and an enormous
amount of human remain in the pile. So the dogs
did excellent. They if they found human sense that wasn't alive,
our live find dogs will go over check it sometimes,
Paul Wine, and then we check it out. We suggest
that they check it. It might not be you know, it's
not live human sent because they didn't bark with their
bark indication, but there might be something there. And then
later on they sent cadaver dogs through. I think watching
my dog and hoping that he could do the job
by training for and not miss anybody. Know that it's
still alive and possibly somebody unconscious, possibly somebody buried, you know,
twenty feet down. You know, if he catches spent, it's
just gonna be a little bit of stent. Hopefully he
got to the you know he could get to that
person before they did pass away. Now there's there's old
ports ready to your mind where you're working your dog.
Speaker 2: So how long was your task force at the site.
Speaker 9: We hear the task one was deployed for ten days.
Speaker 2: What is your most vivid memory from the experience.
Speaker 9: My husband's a firefighter, My whole family go involved in
emergency services. Walking down the street seeing all these crushed
emergency service vehicles fill a pool for the robot lining
the street, knowing that the drivers and the people that
were in those vehicles died. You know, I know that
the first day I was asked to when they started
uncovering a fire truck and two part trucks in an
ambulance to send my dog. They got it uncovered enough
to get to it, send my dog again to see
if he could go under it or through it or
around it under the level, to see if they could
find anybody that maybe dob underneath the trust to keep
them being crushed. And he came out, he did not bark,
And that was very upsetting. When you were asked to
go by firefighters to go find other firefighters underneath emergency
service vehicles and find nobody a lot that was upsetting Alice.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for sharing your story, and more importantly,
thank you for all that you've done and continue to do,
all that New Jersey Task Force one has done, your
dog Chebacca, and all the time and effort that you
put in to make a difference. Thank you to all
of you for doing that. It truly is appreciated in
behalf of all of our listeners, all the people who
went through nine to eleven from a distance. Again, a
heartfelt thank you so much for everything you did.
Speaker 9: And we thank you for taking the time to keep
the tubut, because that's just as important is what we do,
is that they understand we are out here as volunteers
to help.
Speaker 2: We'll continue our nine to eleven look back with John
Belvardi after these messages from our sponsors.
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Speaker 2: Thanks, welcome back to Animal Toopia. Here on pet Life Radio,
we're going to speak with John Valvardi from PA Recovery Dogs.
John was the assistant incident Commander for the Key nine
Recovery Task Force at the Fresh Kill Landfill on Staten
Island after the events of September eleventh, two thousand and one. John, welcome,
tell us a little bit about your responsibilities as the
assistant incident Commander for the Key nine Recovery Task Force.
Speaker 12: Our hostilities in that role were to set up schedules
for figuring out what dogs and handlers were coming in,
how they needed to be oriented to the environment. It
took time to get the dog used to the areas
and also making sure that those handlers and dog teams
had housing where they were staying, what shifts they would
be working, who they would be working with. We had
a lot of volunteers from the New York Hires Department
come up and we had to coordinate with them as
to what teams they would be working with and what
their role would be with the landfill as well as
coordinating with the FBI and LPV.
Speaker 2: Tell us about how the dogs and the teams approached
each area.
Speaker 12: Well, what was occurring was approximately every twenty minutes. The
area was pretty large. I'd say it was probably close
to seventy five yards wide by about seventy five yards deep,
and a tractor trailer with a load of debris would
come in and dump in a straight line one pile
of debris and there were probably at any time three
to four piles going and every twenty miss those would
be rotated, meaning once it was searched by the dogs,
then a bulldozer would come and take that debris away
and you know, push it off in the landfill. If
a dog was working the area and alerted to a
certain portion of the debris, then what would happen was
we were trying narrow down the area. If we needed
heavy equipments come in to pull some of the debris apart,
that would be done and then we would hopefully make
a find.
Speaker 2: When you would make a find, what was the process
for that?
Speaker 12: That would get brought back to the command tent and
then get transferred over to the forensics department for Nypday.
Speaker 2: Now, obviously the dog safety is at the foremost mind
of the handlers, but this had to be an incredibly
challenging experience because of so much debris and so much
potential for injury. How did you handle that?
Speaker 12: It was a very dangerous environment at first when we
got up there. You know, everyone was in taiveak and
with breathing masks and everything else. The dogs were in
booties for the most part. The majority of the dogs
safety is ultimately left up to the handler's discussion as
to how they work their dog, whether it beyond lead
or off lead. We also were adamant about having decon
after every shift that the dogs worked, that they would
get decon, and we were lucky enough to have a
Animal Planet had their Animal Plant Rescue truck their tractor
trailer up there, which we had a veterinarian on site
being able to give a full decon to the dogs
when they were finished working.
Speaker 2: What was it like for you and the dogs when
you first got to the site.
Speaker 12: Getting up there and all the bells going on, walking
around and seeing all these alien looking people in these
big white taivex suits with their masks on and their
big rakes in their hand and all this debris. It
was kind of because we got up there in the
evening on the sixteenth, It was early evening and right
after a night had fallen, So with all the trucks
moving and all the debris and the odor, and the
people walking around in all the suits, it was it
was pretty shocking for a while.
Speaker 9: The dogs.
Speaker 2: When you reflect back, how did the teams and their
dogs do.
Speaker 12: The dogs that were up in the landfill did a
phenomenal job. For the amount of hours they worked to
be able to bring the remains back to hopefully get
identified and to be put with a family, to be buried,
to give someone some little bit of closure for their
level one who was lost, is phenomenal. I couldn't be
proud of the work that was done up there.
Speaker 10: John.
Speaker 2: As you reflect back, what would you say was the
hardest part of that entire experience.
Speaker 12: The hardest part was probably just seeing some large pieces
of human remains that were just laying out there, or
just seeing different items of clothing or different different identifying
items that we knew definitely belonged to someone. It's much
different than if we were working a homicide case and
looking for a burial as opposed to working in that
kind of wreckage and just having human remains all over
the place.
Speaker 2: John, thank you so much for all that you and
your teams have done, and thank you for joining and
sharing with us.
Speaker 12: Thank you very much. I appreciate you.
Speaker 6: Speak with you joining.
Speaker 2: Us now, also via phone is noted author Nonah Kilgore Bauer.
She is the author of the incredible book Hero Dogs
of September eleventh, a tribute to America's search and rescue dogs. Nona,
thank you for joining us. You know, as I look
at the book and I read the stories, they're also touching.
They're also inspiring when you look at the totality of
the book. How do you describe the book?
Speaker 8: I guess complete of sadness and desperation, but at the
same time of courage and bravery and tenacity, the attributes
that we don't normally connect with the canines. On the
fact that these dogs and their brave handlers, the jobs
they did with their dogs were so remarkable and something
that the average American could never possibly imagine. I think
that was a sense that I got it the whole thing.
Speaker 2: No, no, what did you learn most while researching and
writing this book.
Speaker 8: I think what really I found so awesome and it
really blew me away, was the complete dedication of these handlers.
They dedicate their entire lives to their mission of search
and rescue. They sometimes at their own expense. They can
spend up to three thousand dollars on their equipment. Their
travel expenses to training missions and testing sites is at
their own expense. They trained two three days a week,
a little bit with their own dog every day. They
train with groups two or three days a week, and
two weekends a month. They go on training meets, and
they miss ballet recitals, piano recitals, soccer games, family dinners,
so their family sacrifice as well. It's really a total
family effort. That's what I never knew, and that's what
people need to understand about the world of search and rescue.
These people are totally dedicated. This job does not come easy,
and that accomplishment does not come easily. It's their life,
and that's something I did not know.
Speaker 12: I had no idea before I wrote this book.
Speaker 2: No, no, were you surprised as you were gathering the
information about these dogs' efforts.
Speaker 8: So I really wasn't surprised because after breading retrievers for
thirty years and training dogs, I know how brilliant they are.
I know the skills are capable of accomplishing. So I
really wasn't surprised at them. I just did not I
wasn't familiar with the landscape on which they perform and train.
But I wasn't surprised at all because the canine is
God's greatest gift to humanity. That's simply something I've always believed,
and I am just always not surprised, but always thrilled
to know about one more thing they have done and
accomplished in this really complicated human world.
Speaker 2: Is there a particular story that really stands out to you.
Speaker 8: The one that really struck me from the very beginning
in the writing of the book. Mister Simmer was a
firefighter from New Jersey Task Force Sunny Weinman was his name,
and he had a German shepherd named Piper. They were
at ground zero four hours after the attacks. They were
one of the first four task forces to arrive at
the sea and his description of how when Piper just
barely put his nose to the ground just sniffed at
a certain spot a dozen firefighters would be all over him,
digging with their bare hands, trying to find one of
their fallen brothers. It was that's when the desperation sadness
really struck him. And that is when this desperation sadness
reached me as well, given his story, because that picture
is burned in my brain. It was I think typical
of what was going on all over Ground zero, with
every search and rescue handler and all the firefighters around them.
Speaker 2: Tell us about the new edition of the book and
why there was a need to do a new edition
of the book.
Speaker 8: My publisher, an editor and I just agreed that it
was time to not reinvent the book because this tenth
anniversary edition is this. It contains all the same material.
It's been reformatted and redesigned a little bit, but we
have added one hundred pages of new material about things
that were not covered in the first edition and things
that are a little more current because of the events
going on today. But the mission of the book, mister Simmo,
is to make sure people recognize and honor the work
that these dogs did, because without the search and rescue dogs,
there would literally be many hundreds of families that would
not have had their friends and loved ones to bury,
and American needs to know that. And that's the mission
that I'm.
Speaker 12: Stilling with that book.
Speaker 8: And so we felt that a tenth universary edition was appropriate,
very appropriate to mark the tenth university of nine to eleven.
What we have in this book is we have a
chapter on the therapy dogs that worked at the three
Family Assistant Centers. They were there to come for the
families of the victims that were waiting for word if
their loved one had been found. And their stories are
incredibly touching because these were trained therapy dogs, trained to
respond to human emotions and their sense of how these
people felt and what drew them to various individuals, and
how those people thanked to their knees and hugged and
cried hugging the dogs is so poignant, it's really viscual.
That we also have a chapter on the bomb dogs,
the dogs that are trained to detect the explosive devices.
And these dogs are trained to do that, then they
are paired with marines who and soldiers who are then
trained to work with the dogs, and they go off
to Afghanistan and the dogs are saving hundreds of military
lives over there because they can sniff out these very
minute odors that would blow up a tank. And that's
the direct result of nine to eleven. And so I
believe that those dogs needed to be included, because those
dogs and those marines are equally as great hero as
our nine to eleven people. So I just I'd still
be writing. I could find more heroes to write about,
but eventually you have to wrap up a book. The
one thing I really wanted to emphasize that I neglected
to mention earlier was the dual role that the dogs
played at Ground zero and even at the Pentagon. Now,
these dogs are trained to do the search work, and
then they had downtime. They'd be on the pile for
half an hour, and then they'd be off the pile
for a rest period, and during their downtime they became
therapy dogs themselves. The firefighters and the rescue workers would
come over to the dogs and hug them and ped
them and crayon them, just like people did with the
therapy dogs at the family Assistance centers. And in many cases, amazingly,
the dogs would seek out a certain person. They might
spot up firefighters sitting, you know, propped up against the
wall with his head, you know, in his arms, just
exhausted and depressed, and the dogs would go over and
lay their head right on that guy's land, and those
kinds of scenes, that kind of ability, those sensitivities, and
that's another amazing contribution that the dogs provided to the
nine to eleven rescue effort, that they were able to
comfort as well as search, right, And how awesome is that?
Speaker 2: It's incredible? And you know, we all think we know
what animals are capable, especially our dogs, yet often we
forget what they truly can bring to this world.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and we know they have that ability, but we're
not always able to show it or display it or
find an example of it. And here during nine to
eleven we had hundreds of examples of that.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 8: That was the epitome of the dog in every respect possible.
Speaker 2: I think one of the interesting side stories, if you will,
of nine to eleven was that amongst the tragedy and
the sadness and the sorrow, there came a point where
we turn things around where we said we're gonna get
through this, and we're gonna come out stronger, better, and
we're gonna do things in a different way and I
think certainly that was led by the humans, but it
was also propelled and inspired by the animals that were
there side by side with the humans. Did you get
a sense for that as well.
Speaker 8: You know, I would agree with that because the dogs
spirits never sagged, and the dogs are willing to work indefinitely,
you know, so they were I believe in inspiration that
they will go on and continue and that we have
to do. Likewise, in so many cases, the dogs would
go to the veterinary Medical Assistance tent to be after
every every turn on the pile, after each search mission,
they went to the veterinary tent for care. There had
total body shampoos, Their ears were flushed, their eyes were flushed,
their paws were put into an anti bacterial dip to
cleanse them. So dogs were very well taken care of.
And or if the dog is perhaps being treated for
a cutpaw or a little bit of a burn, those
dogs throughout that we're tugging at the least to go
back and work. They didn't want to stop. That inspired people,
inspires people to go on. I think the spear of
the dog is an inspiration. I agree with you one
hundred percent.
Speaker 2: Nona Thank you so much for capturing these incredible efforts
by these amazing animals. Thank you for the book, thank
you for the many books you've written, thank you for
joining us, and I really am honored that you were
on the show today. Thank you so much, Thank you, thank.
Speaker 8: You for having me, and thank you for helping to
promote the search and rescue dogs that serve during nine
to eleven and continue to serve. So we thank you too.
Speaker 2: I also want to thank Abby from the Finding One
Another organization. This organization is doing a lot of great work.
I'd urge you to visit their site at Finding one
Another dot org. I also want to share one last
thing that all of the search and rescue teams, the
working dog teams, the Finding One Another Organization, and NONAH
all stressed to me the efforts by the search and
rescue and work teams are labor of love. These wonderful
people and their amazing dogs have a tremendous amount of dedication.
They spend an unbelievable amount of time, money, and effort
to make sure that there is hope in times of
tragedy and need. Sadly, there are too few search and
rescue teams since most are privately funded and require a
huge commitment. The resources are stretched thinner each day. I
would urge all of you to think about some way
that you can help their efforts, even if it's with
a thank you and some appreciated encouragement. Nine to eleven
was a tragedy. We miss all those who perished. I
end the show by again saying thank you to all
of you who served in this nation's critical time of need.
We do appreciate you for Animal toopia, pet Life Radio,
and all those who made this show possible. Today, I
humbly say thank you, and I look forward to our
next adventure in animal Topia.
Speaker 3: Let's Talk Pets every week on demand only on petlfradio
dot com