Surfside, United States: Blocking from the rubble of the Florida apartment tower which suddenly collapsed last week and left a number of missing people, Patrick Williamson sat with his German shepherd, offering his company to anyone who needed it.
Gracie’s five-year-old has helped him overcome the trauma he experienced in the US Army in Iraq, and with 11 people confirming death and 150 lost after the seafront apartment block collapsed in the middle of the night, he hoped he could do it for surfside people, Florida.
Gracie “gave me a chance for a better life,” Williamson told AFP.
“My philosophy is, if he can do that for me, he can do that for others.” As a rescuer of comb through the rubble of 12-storey building in the hope of finding survivors, assistance workers from all over the United States have traveled to the city of Miami to offer everything from snacks to therapy.
Among them were the unified Navy Savior group, who asked the volunteers to bring therapeutic dogs to help people overcome the trauma of collapse.
“You start caressing a dog, the conversation happened and it was healing,” Jay Harris said, a dog coach who brought four dogs of his client, three poodles and mixed breeds, to surf to help anyone who needed a type of comfort of animals could bring.
“This is very helpful with pressure,” he said.
The Cajun Navy was famous for his help efforts after the storm, but the National Executive Director Jennifer Toby said that around the time Hurricane Harvey destroyed Texas and Louisiana, he realized that there was more to help victims.
“When the whole city is destroyed and people at weeks of shelter, it’s very good for emotional support animals to come,” he told AFP.
With the Champlain Towers South reduced debris into debris that occurred for a few seconds, efforts to rescue the day and night which brought engineers and specialists from as far as Mexico and Israel had changed surfside.
Closure and checkpoints are now welcoming visitors to the Pastel Bungalow community and high-rise condominium on the beach, leaving empty streets, with a quiet injection only with a convoy of police cars and buses carrying missing families and died.
Toney Wade, a veteran search and rescue operations around the world, traveling from Louisiana with Hoeder, Malinino Belgium in three years old, who specializes in finding the remnants of sinking victims and once finding a burning bone fragment.
But Wade was told there were quite rescuers and sniffer dogs involved in dangerous works combing debris, which had seen workers using tools including heavy machinery, listening devices, and even buckets to move debris and find people underneath.
On Monday afternoon, Wade sat under the canopy as one of the many rainstorms that hinders the approaching assistance efforts, hoping that Houder can provide those who need comfort.
“Dogs only show pure love, none of them,” Wade said, who was a search commander and rescue of Cajun coast, another volunteer group.
The visit to the victims’ family members was held on Monday, but before the therapy dog ​​and the owner left perched outside the Surfside Community Center, the victim’s relatives ran to Gracie, sharing for a moment with Williamson’s dog like tears.
eye.
“Closure is the key for everything,” Williamson said.
“This time we interact with people will be a memory they can need if they know that they need more closure than they get.”