Water Recovery Efforts And Training

Search Dogs South participated in three body recovery cases during the floods in Tennessee this spring.

In one case we located the remains of a flood victim in Memphis.

In two cases, one in Dyersburg, the other in Nashville, the remains of the two drowning victims remain unfound, even after exhaustive search efforts by teams from several states and many Tennessee counties.

These unresolved cases lead Search Dogs South to seek to improve our search capability using side scan sonar. Our dogs can tell us whether, on not, there is a body in the water. Sometimes water and bottom conditions work against the successful conclusion to a search. The side scan sonar, when properly setup and used, has the capability of pin pointing the location of a body in zero visibility water.

Search Dogs South is partnering with Fayette County Technical Rescue in a weekend training program, presented by a professional in the use and interpretation of side scan sonar, aimed at taking members from novice sonar operators to well trained and competent operators. We will have live targets, divers, for the trainees to visualize during training.

This training, along with our ongoing cadaver dog training, will raise the level of our response capability to a new level.