Rescue group celebrated at Stormont for saving lives in Turkey

A canine search and rescue group has been recognised at Stormont for its work saving survivors from the rubble after the earthquake in Turkey.

K9 Search and Rescue Northern Ireland, which is based in Bangor, Co Down, assists the coast guard and can help to find missing persons in urban or rural areas.

Rescuers from the group Ryan Gray and Kyle Murray felt obligated to use their skills and expertise to help efforts in Turkey last month, alongside their dogs Max and Delta.

“We were chomping at the bit to get going. Every hour that passed we were losing potentially casualties within the rubble,” Mr Gray said.

“Time is very much of the essence so we were knocking the door down to make sure we could get there as quickly as possible.”

K9 Search and Rescue Northern Ireland has aimed to be ready for all eventualities, not just those that occur on the island of Ireland.

“We train to do all that stuff so that whenever we go to the likes of Turkey, the dogs are used to it,” Mr Gray explained.

“Our team has been to LA training with the Americans. We’ve also been to Malta. We’ve trained with the UK fire service on collapsed buildings so we do a lot of training for this type of event.

“The dogs go in helicopters, they work around aircrafts so they’re used to the sound.”

However despite the training and preparations for disaster situations, both men expressed their shock at the extent of the damage in Turkey.

“Whenever we arrived it was absolute devastation on a scale that we could never have imagined. We trained for the likes of this but this definitely was not within the training remit,” Mr Murray said.

“We were on sites where we had 250 deceased people below our feet and the smell from that. The heartache from families, mothers crying, looking you to go and search their home.

“It had a massive impact on us all.”

Mr Gray added: “It wasn’t really like what you seen on the TV, we had the TV on flat out before we went to try and get ourselves in the right mindframe.

“When we landed it was very different, the scale of it is massive, the whole place is just flattened.

“The smell of death was everywhere because a lot of people had died.

“We were sleeping in a tent at minus 8C at night time, when we did get to sleep. There were no luxuries at all; we were living rough and working 24 hours a day.”

Being on the ground with dogs Max and Delta posed a new set of challenges for the canine rescuers.

“For the dogs the environment is completely different, the smells are different. In Northern Ireland when we’re searching for someone it wouldn’t be in a collapsed building. It would be in the countryside or in the streets,” Mr Gray said.

“Over there it’s all rubble moving under their feet. It’s very unsteady, there’s lots of dangers like glass and sharp metal sticking out.

“Whenever the dogs are going down into the holes underneath the building there’s a risk of further collapse and trapping the dogs.”

Despite the difficulties, the team from Northern Ireland managed to rescue two people from the collapsed buildings. Mr Murray described the feeling of realising they had found survivors in the rubble.

“The chill going down the spine feeling of pure just happiness that we knew that we had got that person. The dogs were 100% right, they knew there was somebody alive,” he said.

“That feeling of pure excitement in your stomach of butterflies nearly, thinking my goodness we’re on here, we’ve got somebody. That feeling is just fantastic as a dog handler.”

Alliance Party leader Naomi Long was at the event at Stormont on Thursday.

“I thought it would be appropriate for members of the Assembly and their staff to hear a little bit about what happened in Turkey. But also to raise awareness of the work the organisation does, not just here in Northern Ireland but much farther afield,” she said.

“Myself along with two MLAs are hosting the event here today to thank them for the work they’ve done.”