Search Dogs, LA Firefighters Return From Nepal Rescue Mission
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Friends and family were relieved to see six rescue dogs return Sunday from Nepal, accompanied by seven members of the L.A. County Fire Department. They worked as a team to find victims after a massive earthquake struck just outside Kathmandu, killing more than 4,000 people and reducing many of the capitol's buildings to rubble.
"It just didn't seem like they were ever going to come home," said Julie Clark, who waited three weeks for her firefighter husband, Dennis, to return.
He and six other firefighters spent spent 32 hours traveling back, with a layover in Japan, before they and their canine partners walked back into LACSD's Technical Operation facility in Pacoima.
This was Dennis Clark and his chocolate Labrador Retriever Rugby's first international deployment. And even though Rugby sliced his leg open on broken glass, he got stitched up and kept right on searching for survivors.
"These people are going through a lot of bad times, and they need our help," Clark said. "I know my family knows that and knows we're there to help them."
Capt. Andy Olvera and his white Labrador Retriever Stetson helped rescue a 15-year-old boy buried under a collapsed seven-story building for five days, before being pulled out alive. He said, "As rescuers, where there is a live person to be removed, we will risk almost everything to get these people out."
A risk Olvera and his team took repeatedly as they continued to comb through the devastation as strong aftershocks continued to rattle the area and cause further damage.
For Olvera's 9-year-old daughter Rebecca the wait and worry is now over: "Every day, we were missing him. When I saw him get out of the truck I was like, 'Whoa, I can't believe he's here.'"
