Makati K9 units to stay in Yolanda-hit Leyte ‘as long as necessary’ for search ops

Makati City on Tuesday reassured victims of super typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) its K-9 units are staying in Leyte "as long as necessary" to search for possible survivors or remains of fatalities. The teams will stay in Leyte, one of the areas hit hardest by Yolanda, to help local government units in the search and retrieval, Mayor Jejomar Erwin Binay Jr. said.

“In these trying times with much devastation around, we could somehow bring some comfort to the survivors by helping them locate their loved ones so that they could be laid to rest and given a decent burial,” he said. Two teams from the Makati Rescue and Philippine K-9 Search and Rescue Foundation (PH-K9) retrieved 17 more remains Sunday and Monday.

The city government said six were retrieved from Barangay 89 Baybay in San Jose, Leyte Dec. 1, and 11 more were found last December 2. The teams' decision to stay in Leyte came amid plans by foreign K-9 teams to pull out of search and retrieval operations and go home.

Binay commended the teams for their dedication to duty and readiness to respond. The city government said the K-9 teams had also assisted in rescue and retrieval operations in Bohol following a magnitude-7.2 earthquake last Oct. 15. In responding to Yolanda, the Makati Rescue and PH-K9 teams left for Tacloban City on November 30 through Villamor Air Base on board a C-130 plane.

The Makati contingent includes 12 personnel from Makati Rescue and four from PH-K9. Among the search dogs in the contingent are a Belgian Malinois named Drena and a German Shepherd named Ash.