Add The New York Post on Google The NYPD is training a fresh batch of pooches for an elite unit with touching 9/11 ties.
The budding dog detectives proved they are up for their special upcoming search-and-rescue tasks during a Tuesday training session in the wilds of a Staten Island dump.
The NYPD’s 12 Emergency Services Unit canines-in-training dashed, sniffed and alerted their handlers as they made their way through the trash transfer station in preparation for their future deployments to states across the country — carrying on the legacy of the pooches who played a vital role in the Sept. 11 terror-attack response.
One of the hounds, Robot, was named by the family of late hero ESU Sgt. Brian McDonnell, a former Army paratrooper who was last seen racing into the South Tower in an attempt to save countless lives.
“The family of Officer Brian McDonnell, they’re the ones that named him Robot,” said the pup’s handler, NYPD Police Officer Kayla Kaiser.
“He came to work, and he was very set on work, and it’s all he wanted to do. He was like a robot. He just did his job, he did it well. He did a great job in Truck One.
“That’s why they chose the name ‘Robot,’ and [the dog’s] the same way,” Kaiser said. “He’s very focused on working. He comes here, and he looks straight at the pile. He just wants to run on it. All he wants to do is work.”
Robot and the other clever canines spent the morning rifling through the concrete slabs, old cars and other debris littered throughout the Department of Sanitation site that mimics the ruins of a natural disaster.
The dozen K9s focused on finding “victims” who were hiding in barrels, before moving on to the two 10,000-square-foot piles of rubble.
“The dog will then go and sniff each one of the barrels, and he has to find the live person inside. Once he finds them, he’s gonna bark, indicate that they’re there, and he gets a toy,” Kaiser sid.
“We have cars, we have boats in there, we have concrete, there’s steel pipes in there, rebar, so it really replicates it very well so that when they do get deployed, it’s not a new sight for them,” she said of the faux disaster scene.
“They know what they’re doing, they know how to do it, and they feel very comfortable on the pile because they’ve done it a million times.”
The doggie crew is working toward eventually joining the New York Task Force One (NY-TF1) team, an elite unit of FEMA’s National Urban Search and Rescue Response System staffed by FDNY Special Operations and NYPD ESU, and coordinated by NYC Emergency Management.
The department offered a glimpse inside the program in honor of National Dog Day on Wednesday.
Once through the rigorous process, the pooches will be deployed to states across the country to assist in search and rescue missions, especially hurricane relief.
The NY-TF1 team was first launched in the 1980s and was one of the elite crews that responded to the Oklahoma City bombing.
But it credits its response to the Sept.11 attacks as one of the most formative to its existence.
Fifty-one members of the unit gave their lives that day.
“Their courage and dedication represent the very essence of our task force, and we remain steadfast in our vow to honor their memory with every deployment,” NY-TF1 states on its website.
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“We carry the memory of the fallen—both those who gave their lives on 9/11 and those lost to related illnesses—forever in our hearts. With every mission, NY-TF1 strives to honor their legacy, upholding the highest standards of integrity, courage, and dedication.”
