Vietnam’s ‘special forces’ have carried out three international earthquake rescues

Xu Kip suddenly stopped on a heap of broken concrete in Venezuela, pushed his nose into the debris, scratched at the rubble and barked. When Ot Ky gave the same signal during a cross-check, rescuers marked the spot and sent engineering teams in. Minutes later, they found a victim.

That search took place on June 30 in La Guaira, the area hardest hit by Venezuela's double earthquake disaster. Working with the dogs, the Vietnamese rescue team located nine victims in the rubble on its first day and handed them over to local authorities.

The moment reflected years of training and international experience, according to Lieutenant Colonel Tran Quoc Huong, head of the scent identification department at Vietnam's Border Guard Intermediate School. He has twice directly commanded Vietnamese service-dog teams on overseas disaster missions.

The dogs previously worked in Türkiye after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the country's south in early February 2023. In Hatay province, temperatures fell to minus 10 degrees Celsius, freezing victims' scent and making the work especially difficult. Using a systematic search method that cleared buildings one by one, the dogs squeezed through gaps in the concrete and helped find eight victims on the first day.

At one collapsed 12-story apartment building, other forces had searched the upper floors without finding anyone. The dogs detected a scent, but excavators found nothing in the initial locations. Huong ordered them to dig below the basement level, even though local forces doubted anyone could be there because the basement was used as a parking area. When the excavator broke through the ground beneath the first floor, three bodies gradually appeared.

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I remember the 12-story apartment building that had collapsed. Other forces had searched all the upper floors but found nothing. When we brought in the service dogs, they clearly signaled a scent.