KATHMANDU: In Rasuwa, where floods buried homes and swept away entire settlements, a Labrador named Samba has been helping rescue workers trace bodies buried under the rubble for nearly two weeks.
The one-and-a-half-year-old sniffer dog of the Armed Police Force (APF) has been working with search teams in some of the worst-hit areas of the district. According to APF head constable Sitaram Koirala, who is handling Samba, the dog has helped trace the locations of around 20 bodies so far.
“When she smells something beneath the ground, she gives an indication by barking in the way she has been trained,” Koirala said.
The dog cannot recover the bodies herself. Samba’s job is to find what lies beneath the debris and alert the rescue team accompanying her. Once Samba signals a possible location, the rescuers begin digging.
Samba, whom the APF brought to Nepal from India when she was just three months old, has been trained as a sniffer dog for search-and-rescue operations. The APF named her Samba in honour of Sabitra Bhandari, popularly known as Samba, the prolific striker of Nepal’s women’s national football team and a product of the Nepal APF Club. The dog, however, has now developed a reputation of her own.
“She is a playful female dog,” Koirala said. “She knows when her handler loves or pets her and responds accordingly.”
The dogs are taught to detect the scent of people trapped or buried beneath structures and to communicate their findings to their handlers through trained behaviour.
The APF dispatched Samba along with two other sniffer dogs, a German shepherd and a cocker spaniel, from its K9 unit to the flood-hit region on August 27, a day after the catastrophic floods struck. She has remained at the scene since then. The other two dogs are currently stationed at the APF office in Nuwakot, according to Koirala.
On September 2, Koirala and other members of the search team took Samba to Timure, one of the worst-hit areas in the district. From there, she was deployed in different locations where rescuers suspected that people could be buried beneath the ruins.
“She traced the location of around 20 bodies in the area,” Koirala said.
Samba, who received a special diet while at the K9 Club, is being fed pet food only while in the flood-hit region, according to Koirala.
The Bhotekoshi flood, which was caused by a rock-ice avalanche from the northern slopes of Mt Langtang Lirung, has claimed over 1,350 lives, while nearly 5,000 are still missing. The torrent swept into the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli river systems, carrying huge quantities of water, mud, rock and debris downstream. It damaged or destroyed homes, roads, bridges, hydropower facilities and other critical infrastructure.
