CHICAGO (NewsNation Now) — Cleanup and search and rescue efforts are underway in Kentucky, where at least 74 people are dead and more than 100 remain unaccounted for following the massive tornadoes last week that flattened towns across the state.
About 500 Kentucky National Guard members have joined volunteers and first response crews sifting through piles of rubble. K-9 police and military dog trainer Sinead Imbaro has also joined the search and recovery efforts in the Bluegrass State.
“It’s a team effort,” Imbaro told NewsNation’s Marni Hughes. “[We] begin our search by assessing what’s there and where we can send our dogs into and hopefully find life.”
Each search and rescue dog is trained to search for different things. Some dogs are live-scent trackers. They pick up human scent anywhere in the vicinity and search to find a missing person who is hopefully still alive. The other is a cadaver dog, which is trained to pick up the scent of human remains. Cadaver dogs can locate something as small as a human tooth or a single drop of blood.
Imbaro said if the dogs find someone who is alive, they will bark to alert the rescue team.
“That bark will continue on until we get there. So at least 30 seconds minimum, they will bark until we arrive. And then we’ll be able to assist that person and (get) them out.”
She said the dogs will also alert the team if they find remains. This isn’t the first time Imbaro has helped out on a search and rescue mission. Imbaro also helped out in the Surfside, Florida condo collapse in June. She said the rescue mission in Kentucky is a bit more difficult due to the size of the area that was hit.
“There’s so much ground to cover that these dogs will have. I mean, they’ll work one location. Once it’s clear, they’re going to move to another location. So they’ll take that time, work that location.”
These highly trained dogs are also trained to move from one location to another quickly.
“If they find no change of behavior in that dog, they’re just going to move on to the next location … and so forth and so forth,” Imbaro said.
Most of the area impacted by the storm is still without power. Food, water, blankets and generators are being delivered to the region. President Joe Biden is expected to visit the state Wednesday to assess the damage.