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Many dogs of 9/11 served quietly behind the scenes
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Denise Grimm & Maverick
On the eighth anniversary of 9/11, there are many memories of K9s, SAR dogs, and therapy dogs who served on that awful day, and for many months after. We all remember the horrifying news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. The second plane flying right into the Tower on live TV. The clouds of dust, people running from the scene. Doctors and nurses lined up outside the emergency rooms of Manhattan, waiting anxiously to use their skills to save patients -- who never arrived. All the victims were dead.
Last year, Denise Grimm relived her experiences, telling me the details of how she and her Search and Rescue Rottweiler, Phoenix, spent days combing through the truckloads of dirt and debris brought to Fish Kill Landfill in New Jersey. Denise is a research scientist at Bristol-Myers, but spends her weekends training in SAR with her New Jersey team.
In 2001, Denise and Phoenix worked for four months nearly every day at the Fresh Kills landfill, identifying body parts. The ground movers would dump out a pile of debris and they would comb through it. They found hundreds of body parts. When Phoenix alerted, she would call over one of the forensic specialists. They would retrieve the evidence -- usually a small piece of bone. Later, forensic specialists in the lab would attempt to identify it.
Denise recalled that her employer was supportive of the volunteer task. She was gone every other day at the landfill. But Bristol Meyers let her keep her job, even continuing to pay her for days she was absent. Their support made it possible for Denise to help bring closure to thousands of grieving family members.
“I remember when we first pulled in, the smell of jet fuel and death was overwhelming. I thought, how could you train for something like this? How are they going to sort through all the tons of dirt? They (the workers) were fantastic. The guys with earthmovers would take a shovel full from huge piles and spread it out. FBI, NYPD, and CIA agents would go through it with little rakes or with hands and knees. They would call dog over. If it was human remains, the dog would alert.”
Denise said that she had trained Phoenix to alert by barking. That worked fine when they were searching a forest or a beach for the body of one person. But at the landfill, there were so many remains, the dogs would have been barking constantly. Phoenix retrained herself on the job immediately, alerting Denise by pawing at the area. “Sometimes, she would just make eye contact with me.” The two worked so well as a team that Denise instantly knew what Phoenix was telling her. “A lot of times you had to pull out bones with a shirt wrapped around it. Or blood in a shoe. Sometimes, you couldn’t tell what the heck they were.”
It was easy for the dogs to make a mistake because the smell of human remains permeated everything. Denise recalled that there was a lot of food in the debris. Some dogs would alert, and it would turn out to be a piece of bread, which may have been handled by a human.
The FBI required 60% accuracy. Denise said that she was never told what their accuracy rate was, but “I got called back every day. They didn’t know who we were; we had numbers, Dog Team 1, Dog Team 6. I couldn’t go every day. It was too overwhelming. I got tired. If I had to work during day, I would take a night shift. My dog did not get tired. Her work ethic was terrific. She wanted to get back on the pile and do her job.”
Now, years later, Denise’s new SAR dog is Maverick, a German Shepherd. He’s being trained in live finds. Her young Rottweiler is being trained in HRD - Human Remains Detection. Her group, the New Jersey K9 Rescue and Recovery Unit, gets on average one search a month for lost persons. It’s usually a child or an older person with Alzheimer’s who has wandered off.
9/11 remains the largest deployment of canine Human Remains Detection dogs the country has ever seen. We pray there will never be another one like it.
FOR MORE INFO: NJ Rescue & Recovery K9 Unit
My book about SAR K9s: Paws to Protect
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