AIUS host IRO exercise
International rescue dogs take part in certification exercise at Aggregate Industries facility in the US
AGGREGATE Industries US (AIUS), part of the Holcim Group, and the International Rescue Dog Organization (IRO), based in Salzburg, Austria, hosted an international search and rescue certification exercise at AIUS’s K-9 Testing Facility in Littleton, Massachusetts, last week.
Rescue dogs from North and South America, and their handlers, were put through rigorous testing, including searches for volunteer human ‘survivors’ under piles of rubble.
‘We were pleased and excited that the IRO selected Aggregate Industries to host this certification,’ said Filiberto Ruiz, president and chief executive officer of AIUS. ‘The IRO and the rescue dogs do an incredible job and perform an indispensable service to both our nation and the world.’
AIUS built the Littleton K-9 Testing Facility in 2010 when the company first hosted a similar event with the Massachusetts Task Force 1 Urban Search & Rescue Team. The course includes specially designed rubble piles to replicate situations where dogs must locate buried survivors.
‘To be able to focus in the chaotic environment of a disaster-site, search and rescue dogs need to be comfortable working on the rubble piles of collapsed buildings,’ said, Debora Ash, operational leader for Canine Alert Search Teams.
‘This can only be achieved by training and testing exercises like the one in Littleton. We greatly appreciate AIUS’s contribution and ongoing support and thank them for providing us with realistic training conditions.’
The Littleton event was the IRO’s first official search and rescue dog testing exercise to be held in the US. The dogs taking part were tested in three different search disciplines – rubble, area search and tracking.
IRO search and rescue teams from across the globe are deployed by the United Nations in times of major disasters. The participants for this particular exercise came from Virginia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Illinois and Bogata, Colombia and South America.
