NI canine heroes of earthquake catastrophe lauded at Stormont

The K9 Search and Rescue NI charity team were welcomed to Parliament Buildings to give a demonstration of the skills that proved vital in the aftermath of the natural disaster last month that claimed more than 50,000 lives in Turkey and Syria.

While in Turkey the team, with dogs Max and Delta, located a woman alive under the rubble a full two weeks after the quake.

K9 founder Ryan Gray said: “We are privileged to be invited to Parliament Buildings today to showcase our work and highlight what a dedicated, professional team we have who help to look for and locate missing and vulnerable people in our own community, nationally and now internationally.”

Although a number of teams, including other search and rescue dogs from Northern Ireland, were on stand-by, the overwhelmed Turkish government was unable to organise further deployments of NI-based volunteer dog teams.

Mr Gray said both himself and fellow team member Kyle Murray felt obligated to use their skills and expertise to help efforts in Turkey.

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

The K9 team aims to be ready for all eventualities.

“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 their for training, 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. country.