Episode 602 - Dead Body Dogs

You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand, KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. On any given day in southern California, hundreds of investigators are working more than ten thousand unsolved cases. That's thousands of friends and families who have lost loved ones, thousands of people who got away with a crime, and thousands of murderers who still walk the streets. Killers who may be your neighbor, go to your church, or could be dating a

close friend. For the next two hours, will highlight cases that have gone cold, baffled investigators, or just needs that one witness to speak up. Is Unsolved with Steve Gregory. In this edition, we meet handlers for two of the cadaver dogs from the Los Angeles County Fire Department. The dog's only purpose is sniffing out human remains. Now they're used for both homicide investigations and recovery efforts. We were invited to meet firefighter paramedics Nick Bartel and Eddie Ruiz

along with their dogs six in Harper. Now we had to do the interview outside so the guys could take care of their dogs. So you're cann hear a lot of wind at times, and we apologize for that, but it's worth it. So meet the dead body dogs. It's part of our ongoing crime fighter series. Let's talk a little bit about the cadaver dog. Is that the original or official name for those dogs, so they kind of changed it now they're known as Human Remains Detection dogs Human Remains Detection dogs? Correct,

And how many are in the department. We have four active Human Remains Detection dogs right now. HRD is the acronym we use HRD. Okay, Now, that's a tool obviously primarily for search and rescue, right correct? Yeah, have you ever been called out to crime scenes or if you help it all and anything like that. So a lot of our call outs, I would say, the vast majority of our callouts, typically at least once

a month, are for within La County. We get burned out structures with possible homeless encamments involved or known missing persons inside that will have to go search moments after they've put out the fire. So well, let's go back and talk a little bit about the dogs. So are all four dogs the same breed of dog? They're the same breed. They're all black Labradors. But they come from different places except for two of them. They're actually brothers,

which Clifford there from the same litter. Okay, so, Eddie, what's your dog's name? My dog's Harper Harper. Yeah, and then what about your neck? Six? He's six because he has a six in his left ear. He was the sixth in the litter. Oh, and what about the name of your dog? So the way that they named the dogs from where we get them, it's it's a nonprofit, so people who donate to that nonprofit get to name the dogs that get trained there. So let's go

back then, this nonprofit, how do you acquire the dogs? And is this something you guys wanted to do or is this something you were told you had to do. So for me, I've always thought having a dog and having it be able to go to work with you was an awesome idea. So when the opportunity came where they were seeking you can I handlers. I applied. I wasn't Toad. I applied because I always wanted a dog to take with me to work, especially if fire station had dogs are awesome in

the fire station. So I applied, went through the whole process and got selected to be a K nine handler. What's the process so extensive? Yeah, they changed it, I think a little bit now. But when we went through it, you had to submit a letter of what was it. You had to submit a letter to our chief of USAR program telling them that you had interest in it. So let's say us A is the acronym for

urban search and Rescue currently, so we had to submit that letter. Then we had to attend that orientation where current canine handlers told us what it entails and how your life's going to change because they're with you. Twenty four to seven. After that, it was a panel interview with some of the current knine handlers and the chief of the USAR program and personnel from the nonprofit who trains these dogs. They were there because they want to be able to see

who we are and see our background. And then after that you get selected, either you get selected or not, and then you move on to that. But that's actually being a candidate, and that's after you've already taken nine week long courses to become a search and rescue specialist. Nine weeks so nine one week courses, okay, over a time period over I did mine in a year, just about a calendar year, and I think I needed the

same. So you take all these nine classes and that allows you to work as a search and rescue specialist for the County of Los Angeles, and then once you do that, then you can kind of fall into a specialty. And then canine is the most time consuming by far of any of them. We require between four to eight trainings a month on top of your normal work schedule, and those are four hour minimum of four hour trainings, sometimes twice

a week, sometimes more. There's this constantly we're being called to do. That's not including the searches that we do on top of all that. So Eddie and I right now I have to do four trainings a month because we're certified. Four trainings a month, plus the local call outs, plus all these other meet and greets and things that we have to do. So it's it's a constant, it's life changing, it's a but we love it. So my trajectory into this program was different. Like when I got on the

job, I thought, oh, there's guys with dogs. This is amazing. I want to do that. But the way the older canine handlers were that they're like, you don't want to do this, it's too much work. So through the department you'd always hear, yeah, it's cool, but you never want to do it. It's too much work. So I'm always

thinking to myself like, oh, it's too much work. But they do that because they want you to keep coming back, and so that's kind of how they get the ones that they want as are the people that hear this over and over and over and then keep gravitating towards it. These courses that you take, though, how are they different from any other use course or

any other firefighter course? How are these different? So these are like the standard use are classes that we got to take, like courses that involve like doing knots, and so they're the core classes. Yeh, of the core classes. So it's either ropes and knots and we're doing high angle low angle rescue type of scenarios, or we're we're shoring up buildings for collapse and we're doing this, and we're doing that. There's so many different things that we

have to know, we're jack of all trades. Masters have done. So, like you were talking about the core class, you're taking the core classes that a lot of other agencies have done. But what makes our department different. We're the only urban search and rescue team in the country that does not allow civilians. So I would say the majority, the vast majority of canine handlers are civilian handlers. So we don't allow that because we want to. I want Eddie to be able to run his dog and then put his dog

away and then go work and do something else. So everybody has the same fundamental training, so we can all do each other's role our position perfectly cross trained. Yeah, but then we have those specialties on top of that where we kind of that's what we'd like to do. So in addition to being a firefighter, you're also certified in search and rescue urban search and rescue, you're also canine certified, and you're also paramedics. So yeah, I would

say first and foremost for firefighters. Then second of all, we're paramedics. Eddie and I are both paramedics. That's our primary role as firefighter paramedics, and then search and rescue, and then on top of that we're canine handlers. So we have four different things that are all taking parts of our time point, which makes me tired. So think about it like, so a civilian is able to just simply go to trainings do the dog thing. But

I'm working ten to fourteen to twenty four hour ships a month. I'm going to four to eight dog trainings on top of that a month, and whatever urban search and rescue, just the core hours that I need to put in, plus paramedic recertifications and this and that. There's this constantly a battle for time, and I gotta spend time with family, it is. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that and a lot more. This is Nick Bartell and Eddie Ruiz with the Ellie County Fire Department, and when we come

back, more about the HRDs, the human remains dogs. It's unsolved with Steve Gregor and k if I AM six forty. You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand kf I AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory, and this is unsolved. Before we get back to the guys, just a quick reminder, you're gonna hear some wind at times. We apologized, but we had to be outside so the guys could take care of their dogs. Welcome back. We're talking with Nick Bartell Eddie Ruiz

both are La County firefighters, are also paramedics and canine search specialists. And before the break we were talking about it's just your careers and sort of what got you into it, the intense training and the background that you go through. So now let's talk about the dogs. So you guys are all fully trained up as you sare urban search and rescue professionals. Now you guys decided you want to put a dog into the mix, so you've gone through a

lot of this training. So do you have to go be a part of the dog's training or are they fully trained when you get them. So there's a foundation called Search Dog Foundation. Their primary role is to train search and rescue dogs for our team and teams around basically are on the world now.

So typically as search and rescue dog is trained for about what you say, it's nine months before we're handed the leash, and it's every day pretty which all day, every day, there's some sort of training involved with these dogs. And about month I would say seven to nine, we go out there and we work with the dogs. So Eddie and I will go up and we'll both run multiple dogs and we'll learn the whole just basically how we learn

the core values of being urban search and rescue. Now we're learning the core skills of canine handling. So we're not trainers by any means, but we're handlers. So they come in they kind of teach us, here's what we need to do, here's how to do this and that, and they show us a foundation of how they train these dogs to do what they do,

so that way we know what the foundation is. So if during our training, because like he said, we're not trainers, we're just handlers, but during our trainings that we go to we find stuff that's going on with the dogs, we can always fall back to the foundation of how they train them. So we could go back, just like anything else in life, you go, you fall back to the foundation what they know, so that way we could help them through problem, like if they're having problems during training.

So did you pick the dogs? Did they pick you? Dog that picks the handler? Really? Yeah? So when Nick and I were in the same cohort, we were handling five dogs. Yeah, five dogs wasn't five? Yeah, it was fine. So there was a couple live, fine, So there was five of us that was just us too. But including but they knew we were going to do human remains detection, so they gave

us. We were handling five of the human remain detection dogs that Search Dog Foundation was training at that time, So, like he was saying, we would go over there once or twice a week and we'll just train with them, and that's how they start building that relationship with the dogs, and whichever dog showed more interests or better relationship with that handler, they kept an eye

on that. So we went through that. Then the whole process at the end of that is we go to their foundation which is in Santa Paula, California, and we stay there for two weeks. It's their their handler course that they call they called it, and we stay there and we're training with them every single day. On the first Monday of the second week, that's when they pair the dog with us. And throughout that whole weekend front of the months prior that we were going up there, they pretty much say,

the dog picks you. So they knew at that point that Harper she gravitated to me more than Nick at that time, and I'm glad because she's such a character. Even though things is cool, but she's such a character. Were But it's funny because you know, watching the dogs now and how playful they are, it's it's it's hard to imagine the serious job they play in the role that they have in search and rescue and in human remains detection. I mean, they obviously have no clue on the role they play, you

guys do. I mean it's a weird juxtaposition to just watch them play around, but knowing their role is so vital yeh. Everything they do is for that ball or a toy, just like that. So every dog coming out a Searchong Foundation, part of their vetting process is the do the dog has

to be incredibly toy driven. They can't give up the toy. There's a whole screening process that they put these puppies through, or puppies or they get a lot of donations from different shelters and dogs that are really high energy, high drive that think that's the shelter thinks it would be a good suit for a good fit for the Searchdog Foundation, and so they put them through the screening process where they have to they throw a ball up on a hill and

they hide it and they do all these different things where the dog has to maintain like visual they have to be going crazy for the ball. They just their whole life, their whole existence is based off of receiving this toy. One of those things that they do is, like he was saying, they'll throw a toy up in a hill, let the dog see it, and they'll hold that dog back for five minutes to see whether or not they have that toy dry, because in five minutes a dog could get bored and like,

I don't want to do anything that toys. But all these dogs go through that screening and that five minutes they're high energy, like they are right now trying to search for that toy. So that's how they get That's one of the tests, which I think is the biggest one that they use to see whether or not they're toy driven. I'll be darned. So Nick tell

us about six how old? What kind of sick is a He's a three year old black lab, he was, so to start it all off, Eddie and I are the first human remains detection dogs handlers to come out of search recommendation. So it was a pilot program for them. Harper and six

were one of our two of five. I believe that they had, and they were kind of screening them all, figuring out which ones we're gonna work, and it was just Eddie and I going through and then John Mungia was our third, but he was about six months behind us, I would say. So the dogs that were ready were there was about four that were ready, and then Clifford, who Eddie or John ended up getting, was a little a little behind. But so six again, three year old black labrador.

They got him as a puppy. She was kind of the ace in the hole for them. They were able to go up to Wyoming, pick him up, fly him back and really worked with him from I think like eight weeks on. So and what about you? What about Harper? So Harper she came from South Dakota, so her story it's a little different from six. She was actually confiscated from a home that had over thirty dogs in

it. And when they confiscated the dogs that got sent to shelters, and that shelter there was SDF there that noticed two dogs that had that toy drive that we were talking about, and they contacted SDF and told them we have these two great dogs. We think there'll be good candidates so that's when she

made the trek from South Dakota to Ventura County and started her training. She started a little later, she was three years old because she was pretty much a rescue, so she was three years old when she started her training at a SDF. She's now seven years old. So is there a lifespan on their ability to do this job? So you can see how fit the dogs are just looking at them here. We have a full fitness program we put them through before we're handed the dog. They are doing squats, planks,

lunges, you name it they're doing. They're doing handstands and they're holding handstand positions to work shoulder movements. And these dogs are incredibly fit because all they're doing is running up and down rubble piles all day. So their typical lifespan we try to get our workspan. We try to get about nine years out of them in years, so around nine is typically the age we start to think about retirement for the pubs. When we come back, we're going to

talk more about how the dogs are being used in the real world. But first this is unsolved With Steve Gregory on KFI AM six forty. You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand k if I AM six forty heard everywhere live on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory and this is Unsolved. If you're listening on the app, you can send us a tip about a case, a story, idea, or a comment about the show. Just tap

the red microphone on the app and record your message. Before we get back to the guys, just a quick reminder, you're gonna hear some wind at times. We apologized, but we had to be outside so the guys could take care of their dogs. Welcome back. We're talking with Nick Bartel and Eddie Ruiz. Both are firefighter paramedics with the Los Angeles County Fire Department,

and there are also canine search specialists. We've been learning a lot about their dogs, six and Harper, and now that we've kind of got the background, let's talk about what the dogs are trained to sniff. I mean, they are human remain dogs. What is the specific odor or scent that they are trained to detect. This one's a little difficult to answ there because we think broad general. When people think it's like human remains, Like, okay,

they're human remains. That's what they smell, But they have to realize that human remains goes through the decomp process and there's stages of it and depending on time frame that human remain unfortunately perish, there's gonna be giving out different scent. So these dogs are trained on human remains in the different stages of d comp because there's not just one scent that they could they could detect. It has to be multiple scents from human rooms as at different stages of d

coon. So it's not an easy question to answer. Well, then how do they break it down in the very how well, let me ask you this, how many stages of decomposition are there? That's a very good question that I mean if I mean, well, you got to actually so for us, we're so broad too. We're not just looking for, uh, somebody who passed away in their home. We're looking for somebody who's burned, somebody who drowned, somebody who this like murder, this that we're looking for,

uh blood traces. Where there's so many, there's so so vast of what we're looking for, Like, there's so many different components to our job. Is it. Are we looking for type of crime scene, type of thing? Are we looking for somebody lost ins oiud of a burned structure? Are we looking for something like Maui that just happened where we're looking for bodies in an entire city. So that's something we have to train on at all times. And these dogs aren't going to hit on that odor unless they've been

trained on it. So then okay, So back to that question. So, like, let's talk about a body it's you know, been been dead for you know, four or five days. Obviously that gives off a different type of Typically you won't need a dog for that. Yeah, yes, but I agree. Where's a body that was completely charred and burned like in Maui? Yes, so that was that was ashes? Yes, So that gave off a scent. So these we've trained our dogs to detect human cremations.

We've had the opportunity that people have donated loved ones human like their cremation, so we were able to train them on that four cases like Maui. Wait a minute, so I guess I'm trying to wrap my hand around this. So ashes have a scent, Everything has a scent. Everything had no ashes are not going to put out a lot of scent, which is why we have dogs whose noses are thousands better than our nose. So they put out scent, but not a lot of scent, but they do enough to

where the dogs can pick upon it correct. So do you establish is there sort of a baseline established when you talk about the scent of ashes as opposed to the scent of rotting skin, a rotting flesh. So these dogs are initially trained off of basically, we have somebody donated their body to science, and this agency allowed our team to take a source or basically a whole body, and it's currently at the Searchdog Foundation and they hold our source and under

lock and key, and that's how they're able to train these dogs. So they literally have bodies in different stages of detail. So it's just one I think it's just one body, but they keep different pieces of it. They keep the whole thing frozen, but they're able to take pieces of it, put it in the pile, let a thowf for a little bit, put it right back in the freezer. So that's just the we were talking about

baseline. That's the baseline. So we're just trying to get these dogs exposed to muscle, fat, liver, spleen, brain, all these different things so that when they're out there they have a foundation to where once we're handed the leash is the handlers. Now we can go out in the world and try to find other avenues to discover source or go to different trainings throughout the country or world to figure out again like or now we got to work with

burn. Now we got to work with drowning victims. Now we got to do this and that there's now we're working on trace elements of blood. There's this again, so many different facets to this job. And these human remains detection dogs, like whereas with the live find dogs, they're looking for somebody who's breathing and giving off skin rafts and the dogs go in and they find that one person. Now you go to a human remains dog. It's a

skin raft. So you're as you're sitting here right now, you're basically the skin on your body is coming off and being exposed in the air, and the dogs can hit on that. So they're basically hit on your exhalation, your clothing, which they're not supposed to because there could just be clothes outside

of my dress, right or something like that. So skin wraps, exhalation things like that is what the live fine dogs are going for, whereas we're looking for we could be looking for the tip of a finger inside of an entire train, Like that's what That's how minuscule we're using when we do train.

It sounds like you did something like that. Well, when he brought that up at Del Boo, we have this huge rubble pile and for whatever reason, I kept my baby teeth that fell off when I was a kid, and I found it and I decided to put it out in that rubble pile one day and both dogs were able to alert on those teeth. Really, yeah, that that's pretty remarkable, and that's his own when you think

about it, that's pretty remarkable. So you've gone through the training now and they've learned how to sniff out various stages of decomposition from flesh to ash. Now you've got your dogs, you've left the training, you're coming back to LA. You're probably excited, right, nervous, nervous, nervous. Now we have this dog that we can just real quick, how long ago? How long have you had your dogs? So wouldn't we go through three years? Years? So three years ago? So I had a different dog,

before six. So that's why the time discrepancy. Okay, got it. Yeah, But then that first time you bring your dog back home with you and now you literally they've literally cut the leash if you will, and you're on your own, so you were it was more nerves than I was. The Well, the first time I got my first dog home, I was nervous because, like when you're at Search Dog Foundation, the dogs aren't able

to leave, so you're just going there, you're visiting. The dog can stay with you in your dorm, but the dog's not able to leave campus. But now you're responsible for this dog. I don't have kids, I don't have a working dog. And these dogs are so smart they know how to manipulate you. So that's the problem is they can they can kind of throw you for a loop too. Especially the malinwas the pointy ear. Dogs are even more manipulative than these guys. But now I have something that I

can mess up, I can improve on. There's this I don't know how to. There's a lot of things I didn't know. Okay, well, we're going to talk a lot about that coming up. At first. This is unsolved with Steve Gregory on KF I am six forty. You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand. Okay, if I AM six forty heard everywhere live on the iHeartRadio app, I'm Steve Gregory and this is unsolved. If you're listening on the app, you can send us a tip about a

case, a story, idea, or a comment about the show. Just tap the red microphone on the app and record your message. Before we get back to the guys, just a quick reminder, you're gonna hear some wind at times. We apologize, but we had to be outside so the guys could take care of their dogs. Welcome back. We're talking with Nick Martell and Eddie Ruiz. Both are firefighters with the Ali County Fire Department and they're

canine search specialists. We've been learning a lot about two of the four dogs that work for the department in the search and rescue capacity, and they search remains or searching for human remains, whether it's from a natural disaster, a fire, a murder scene. And now, guys, you've had your dogs trained, you've brought them back this three years ago. When you first got your dogs, you remember your first call out, I do yeah, tell us about it. It was there was no one was ever found, but

it was stressful. Right. It was a big church in I believe it was like Monrovia or something like that, and there was an abasement. We had to use a ladder. So these dogs are training on ladders. They can climb up and down ladders, so we had to use a ladder to get six down. So he was able to go search this basement of this large church where we didn't find anything. But the dog was basically almost swimming because you have to think they have to put this fire out and where's all

the water go It goes down, So now that's basically a pool. So the dog is searching this basement that's just covered in water or just full of water. And so that was my first realization, like there's a lot I need to learn, like is this the right time to search? Like what come? Would I have done better? So constantly I would say we get one to two a month. Now you're constantly putting different slides in the rolodex and it's it's a lot. It's stressful. Well, Eddie, you know

I want to hear about your first call out too. But you know, one of the things here as firefighters, How are you trained to encounter the dead person? Because this is different because now you're like searching for dead people. As a firefighter, though your first goal is to put out the fire and then maybe search for whatever was left, but you know that when you're

being sent out deployed, you're looking for remains and dead people. So is the training on how to cope with that different than just being a regular firefighter. I honestly, personally haven't really got in any training on how to cope with dead people, just as my job firefighting, Like paramedic, I don't think we've ever gotten training how to cope with that. It's just on the job experience. The more you're exposed to it, the more desensitized you get

to it. I guess because I've never gone through a training like that, but I think they should do something like that because it could be well, especially traumatic. Do I mean you were literally and then when you your scope of what your question was phenomenon. I've thought about this regularly since MAUI As like you said, we're Eddie and I are paramedics, so we're used to dealing with people who have deceased or are about to or different different stages.

But now, like you said, we're actually searching for dead, dead people and that's all we do. Like is when he gets a call out or I get a call out, it's to go find somebody who's missing, presumably dead. And are we looking for a child, are we looking for an adult or I don't know what we're looking for. I don't know what we're

going to find. And you used to just be when you see something like that, it never bothered me. I would just think of like, Okay, I never knew the person, the person was older whatever, as a paramedic, and now you're seeing things like okay, this person's my age, or now you're seeing the family involvement, and that's the stuff that kind of sticks with me, is seeing the family afterwards or seeing the loss in the

I don't know. I don't know the right word to explain it. But ever since I don't know the last yeah, the last six months is probably I've thought about it more than I usually do. Well, Then, when you Eddie, when you talk about you know you're going out there with the intent of finding human remains, do you remember the first dead body you found? Uh? I don't really recall the first one that we found that I think the first one would had to be our Maui deployment if I'm okay.

So, but like three years ago, when you you've you've not you don't remember three years ago getting your first hit or your first successful hit. So there was there was quite a few that we've been to together where we've we've had we're looking for two bodies. And by the time we get there, because again you got to remember that we're on shift or we're at home, and now we have to go get everything ready and travel to Most of the time it's Lancaster, Palmdale, wherever. It's never close. So by the

time we get there. A lot of times they found the person by the time we get there, because it could be one of our last ones was a six hour d and then obviously by the time we get there they've kind of figured it out. Was that at where was that it was the seventy seven Gorman. So you get deployed outside of the county, we can't still

that count Yeah, oh up with the grapevine. Oh god, yeah, I got it, got it. Yeah, But like I was over here and then I had to go somewhere else get the van and get the dog. Just constantly. Your whole life is now getting spooled up. Everything's changing from you had this beautiful day with your girlfriend and now it's like, oh, I gotta go. Look that's the way. I don't want to harp too much on it, but I think it's fascinating because the dogs don't know

any better, or they don't know any different. No, they think it's fun. But you guys have to process this. I mean, not only do you know where you're headed to, but then when you're done with it and you come back, there might be imagery that you never get out of your mind. Last one, for sure. The only thing that helps is that knowing that we're bringing closure to family members and friends. I think that's the best where we get cope with that. Just these dogs are trained to

do this, and we're the handlers for these dogs. Though we're bringing that closure for families and friends. Well, speaking of that, uh, when we come back, I want to talk about Maui because that's I first met you guys, the day that you flew over to the island of Mali to work on behalf of FEMA and you it was three of you. There was three of you, right, the three of your four that had gone over, that had been deployed, and we were on the same flight together.

I remember us being at Lax and I remember the day that you, I mean the morning you got in there. You guys were like rock stars. You know. It's those dogs, They're like magnets. Yeah, you know, you know, everyone loves the dog. And then you know, when they realize the severity or the assignment that you had, the moment gets pretty somber all of a sudden. And do you notice that. Yeah, when when you find out what you're being sent over for, and then it's like

then there's this reality that kind of comes over you. But when we come back, I want to talk about your deployment to Mali and bit about what you experienced and share kind of because I saw this whole thing from a different less than you did. So we'll talk about that. But first, this is Unsolved with Steve Gregory on KFI AM six forty. You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand, kf I AM six forty live everywhere on the

iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory, and this is Unsolved. Before we get back to the guys, just a quick reminder, you're gonna hear some wind at times. We apologized, but we had to be outside so the guys could take care of their dogs. Welcome back. We've been talking with Nick Bartel and Eddie Ruiz. They are canine search specialists with the La County Fire

Department. They're also firefighter paramedics, and we were talking a little bit about Maui before the break and that's how I first met you, gentlemen, and I want to get right into it now. So you get the call. You know, only County Fire is a you get deployed a lot for for help around the world. I mean, are you're also part of the US AID right, we're one of two international Cuchier Rescue teams in the country US in Fairfax, Virginia. Because you I think the last time I remember doing

a story about you guys, you were Turkey. Eddie and I were both in Turkey as well. Yeah, so well let me ask you about Turkey then, because that was one of those where it was rubble, I mean just really massive bowlders and rubble and dirt and whatnot. How did that trip go? So we don't take human remains detection dogs international. That was a little different for US. Okay, earlier we were saying there's we're rescue specialists in the USAR world, and that's how he got deployed at Turkey as a

rescue special We didn't go as Knight search specialist. So was that a was that a search or or was that a recovery or rescue mission rescue? So it always internationals are always rescuing rescue. That's why we don't bring the human remains detection. We brought six live find dogs, got it. So Eddie went as a communications specialist. I went as a rescue specialist, and we just had different roles where we wish we could have the dogs. It was

how many live find dogs do you have right now? I would say twelve twelve dogs? Okay, use we need to fill if we should have eighteen at some point. So we need to have a FEMA team ready to go, an international team ready to go, and a regional team ready to go. So six, six and six yeah would be optimal. Yeah. You guys get sent all over the place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got sent to Florida last year with Harper after Hurricane Ian. So we went

there for the recovery efforts for that line. So talk about how how that works with FEMA, because it's the one thing I learned about you guys, because we were always working obviously with your chief Maroni, with you know, access and figuring out how to do everything. But once you've been requested by FEMA, you become sort of an employee of the federal government. Correct, we're no longer La County Fire Department, We're FEMA representative and we're California Task

Force too. That's we we primarily report to FEMA at that point, right, So then they call the shots the minute, because I think the way you described it is the minute you got on the plane, you were FEMA. Correct. Yeah, so which men I can't I couldn't talk to you at all in Maui on Mali rather, but uh yeah, so the Maui you already knew what was going on by the time you got to Mali's. Had you ever experienced anything like that? Both of you? No, not

to that scale. I would say the closest thing would be Paradise, But that was before I got on. Had you got you got deployed to Paradise? No, No, I would say that that was before I got on, but we have multiple team members that did go, but they've all retired. Now. Ye, that was a that was a brutal So I would say that would be the closest where the people are actively trying to escape and getting overrun. Yeah. Where as far seeing the destruction, we see it

living in southern California with the wildfires that we have right every here. So the wolf see being one of the most destructive ones that we've had in this area. But in Maui now it's the same type of destruction, but it's in a larger scale because it's a whole community. So what did you know about the fires in Maui before you got on the plane? So the first time I heard Lahina, I was thinking La Nai. I'm like arid Island. Okay, that makes sense, that would be a fire there. And

I heard it again. My brain just couldn't compute. But Leahina had just been completely decimated. So it took me at least one or two news segments to realize like, oh wait, it's Leahina and lot Lenai. I'd been to Lahina. I've been to Maui probably ten times, and I've seen its beauty. I've seen the history, I've seen what the city used to look like, and then seeing it reduced the rubble, it was just it was heartbreaking. It was my first time ever in Hawaii, so that was my

first experience of too. I'd never been to Maui. I've never been to any island over there. So when I saw that, I was like, I state it because I didn't get to see what Leona was because I was asking exactly during our deployment, like what was Lehona? Because I heard it was a tourist. It was more of the locals too, and he's like, yeah, this was the place to be in Front Street, like all the restaurants and everything. And to think that that's not there anymore and you'll

never get to see it. Yeah. That was way when I got sent to Hurricane Katrina. I had never been to New Orleans before, so when my very first scene of New Orleans was underwater, so I told myself I had to go back and see it again. You know. Fortunately they didn't have to rebuild a lot of stuff. A lot of the historical stuff stay in attack. But that is a very surreal experience when you go to some place like that and to have it be desolate as well. It was just

us. It was just us, the FEMA members and our force protection, which was the DA for us. The DEA came out and offered force protection, but I don't think we ever felt unsafe in the area, but they weren't allowing people in, so it was honestly, it was very desolate. It was just us and the dogs. So you know that you're going over for this mission, and you know that you're going over to with your human remains dogs. You say, when you saw that first scene, where were

you first deployed and what was your first assignment or mission. So we landed at the airport and we went to the hotel thinking we were probably going to go to work, but they ended up betting us down after the travel, so we didn't start until six thirty am the next day, and we met at the basically they call it the smoke stack from one of the sharcane plants,

and we would all meet there. It was a big was one of the It was the only tall structure there so everyone can see where it was and we'd meet up there and then we would Eddie and I searched predominantly more towards the foothills, ye, kind of the upper upper portion, and then we worked our way towards Front Street. We're just going parcel to parcel. The heat was pretty brutal for the dogs. The dogs weren't really wearing booties for the burned scars or yeah, the fire, it was for the asphalt.

It was like at ten am, it was we had our thermal imager and it was reading out hundred fifty degrees asphalt at ten am. So they were using that more for their protection and walking around the asphalt because we were walking around neighborhoods like we were working together. So six will go search like six eight homes in a row and coming in and out walking on asphalt, and then Harper will come in our mites versa. So it was more for

to protect their pause from the asphalt. When we come back, I want to talk more about the search and your experiences there, and you're kind of like how you processed it in general. But first this is unsolved with Steve Gregory on KFI AM six forty. You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand kf I AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory and this is Unsolved Welcome back. We've been speaking with Nick Bartel and

Eddie Ruiz. They're both firefighter, paramedics and canine search specialists with the La County Fire Department. We've been talking now about your experiences on the island of Maui and your deployment in the historic town of Lahina. You say you kind of started on the eastern edge of the city or the town rather, and you were doing these parcels. When you have the like six and Harper, when they're deployed to these parcels, how are they searching? I mean,

do you just let them loose in there? Are you guiding them through like a grid search? So so we were searching lot the lot right, So we would start up above at the eastern end and then work our way downhill. Would kind of be what we were doing. So it being hot, like we discussed earlier, we would run the ac and the we had an expedition or an explorer or something like that with the dogs and crates in the

back. So I would run let's say three to four five lots and then I would put my dog up and then Eddie would bring his dog out. We would do one dog at a time. That way we're not running both of them, sure exhausting them exactly for the most part, like the dogs will be at the driveway of that lot and just let them go and we'll walk with them so we know where they'd go, so that we know exactly what they've searched so far. But for the most part, they would be

working independently from us. And if we notice that they miss a like a bedroom in one of the lots, so you're watching, you're watching very keenly where they're going, and I'm also watching Eddie's dog or he's watching my dog. And then we're also with Nevada Task Force one, I believe a Task Force one and they had probably five team members there as well, or if I need the DEA agents to kind of keep an eye on it as well, because safeties for these dogs is there. There's still danger around rules,

so we needed people around. But for the most part, we had to pay attention to them because they do show different body language when they are on odor. When we mean older, a human remains older, so they do change their body language, so we have to like really pay attention to them. So we know where their body language changes, and then we could help them out by sending them close to where that was at how far away can

they smell? What's the range? It all depends, Like right now we have when Win helps these dogs tremendously because that spread the scent and it comes out as a scent of cone. So the closer you are to it, the narrow it is. But as the further you get out, you still could smell it, but it's a larger say window of scent that they could they could get. So but they like in the rubble pile that we have at del Val, they could sense it from like they know they can be

six will jump on the pile and realize instantly there's nothing on it. And just so Delow is center right. So but in the case of Maui Lehina, I'm trying to remember, there was some breezes. There were breezes that a lot. Yeah, So like if you're in a in parcel one, would you get a scent from parcel five down the street? We can't. I'm sure they did, but we still have to search one, two, three. But you we've learned that our dogs are gonna stay on task and

they're gonna work. So like if the dog does kind of deviate and go towards something and we pull them back, now that dog was probably may have been going towards oder, but now I've just pulled them back, and now he's like, maybe that's not what my target is. So you kind of have to just watch the dog check out their body language. Is he is he looking for food? Is he doing this? There's certain tells that we've worked with these dogs long enough to where we know when they're on older food,

this, that the other thing. And now we can kind of let the dogs do their job and we can figure out what they're doing. And that's that's part of why it's great w'reking in Paris because I know how six works. So there were times where I noticed Six and the breeze picked up. He started going towards the back of a lot, and I just brought it up so we know later on, once we finished the neighborhood that we were in, that we could possibly go back down there so that way Six

could search because he was showing interest that way. How soon you started working on that. See we flew in on Sunday, right, and so you started Monday morning. Yes, yes, so how soon on that Monday morning before you got to hit Yes? That so nothing the first day. We're not allowed to discuss how many. That's fine, I want to ask you we found, but I mean, I'm what I'm curious about is how how quickly you were able to I mean, they were just able to find something.

I would say that is where they started out finding stuff. Is it possible, guys that and I mean no disrespect by this question. Is it possible that you could miss parts or areas? Yeah, it's again, it's a tool, it's not and it's an exact science. It's just an extra

tool. So a lot of the searches we do, like we discussed earlier, and visible cues, like somebody who's just wandering around could see that there's somebody deceased, and that's just that's that's fine, that's I'm glad if somebody else finds it, as long as the person's being found and the jobs getting

done at any time when you were looking for for for remains. And I don't want this to be a very Macob question, but I'm curious because I think it illustrates the intensity of that fire you never found any solid remains, right, it was all ashes correct, There were Yeah, there was different stages bones in. Yeah, we had boneses, We had some tissue and

things like that, but no complete bodies. I would say, I think I'd also heard someone explain more time that they can also sniff out the bone marrow in the in the is that something they're trained to sniff bone marrow? So again, if if if we've exposed them to it had bone marrow when we were training with them, then they'd be they'd be able to I it had been characterized to me by others over there on the island that there were quite a few bones found and that they were able to sniff the they were

able to sniff the scent of the bone marrow in the bone. That's it was characterized to be that. I think it probably was more just they sniffed the bone because we do train on human bones, which is a great thing, and we have some that we train on and so even even the human bones going through intense heat like that still off the scent. So another issue we ran into, and we had a forensic anthropologist multiple on the island helping us out. So when we do training, so six goes he finds the

source the target odor. We have a we call it an active alert. He barks at it, and he focus bark. He won't look up, just keeps looking down and barking at the odor. So I know exactly where that is. So when Six or Harper are actively barking at a source in Maui, we can't reward them because we're not one hundred percent sure. Everything kind of looks the same at this point. It's basically ash, just bone fragments. We don't know if it's dog, human, It could be anything,

so we hold it right there. Women come back. We'll talk more with Nick and Eddie, but first, this is unsolved with Steve Gregory on KFI AM six forty. You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand, kf I AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory, and this is unsolved. Before we get back to the guys, just a quick reminder, you're gonna hear some wind at times. We apologized, but we had to be outside so the guys could take care of their dogs.

Welcome back. We've been speaking with Nick Martel, Eddie Ruiz both with the La County Fire Department, and we're talking about their dogs, Harper and

six. They are human remains detection dogs, and we've been talking about your assignment on the Island of Maui and Nick, you were in the middle of it, and I'm sorry to have interrupted you how to do the break, but you were talking about sort of the detection part of this, and I was asking the question about whether or not you could miss a parcel and it's not an exact science, and you were walking us through all the different things

these dogs could get distracted with smelling, you know. So yeah, to go back, the dogs have a our arcneines have a we call it an active alert, so a bark alert. So that way we do that so that we know where the dog is and where he's alerting, because we can send six and Harper into structures that we're actually not able to access. So when they start barking, I know, like, okay, now we have

to go find the dog. So there's what's called a passive alert where some of the older dogs will have a basically sit down where the odor is. So that's great, that's great, but like if he's in a three story structure that's collapsed. I don't know where that dog is. I don't know if he's a learning or not. I now, I just have a dog that's inside of a structure, sitting down and I don't know where he is.

Do you have a GPS tracker on these guys? No, So we have a Nevada Task Force member with a GPS and they're kind of walking the parcel with the gun. We like to run the dogs naked, which means no caller, nothing on them. That way, if there's rebar and like that, they don't get snagged, they don't hang themselves anything like that, they can't get into it. So that's why we typically run them naked.

I have to ask you this because it became a huge issue while I was covering it from my point of view, because we were hopefully we were going to try to get together over there. We were not able to do it because it would never let me near you guys. I was able to go over there for the one hour and get into the impact zone. But something that came up over there too was a lot of this consideration for cultural sensitivity. Did you guys get any kind of an overview A lecture or any kind

of a quick primer on cultural sensitivity. I don't think we did. They just came out and said, just be careful, don't do anything that would come out as insensitive to the locos. But that's pretty much the case with everything. Eddy and I have deployed enough either on urbanster's or rescue deployments or just brush fire deployments outside of the county up in Shasta or wherever, that

we're aware we're not just going to go play on the beach. We're not going to go do things where eyeballs are looking at us and being like, well, these guys aren't working, they're just having fun. Like we're aware of the public image and so, but I don't know, maybe other teams aren't, or people get a little lax with those rules, so they have to implement that because I guess even swimming in the water there, because people were trying to escape the flames, jumped in the water and perished, so

they're thinking their ancestors are now in the water. They don't want people swimming in it, which is understandable. But Eddie and I wouldn't go swimming there anyways, knowing that we don't want people who are from Maui thinking that's a bad optic exactly so, and we we were around some of those that were displaced front of the fire, and they were grateful to have us there because they knew we were there trying to help out with the recovery efforts. I

was going to ask you how the locals took to you. The one is that we acted with it. They loved us being there. We didn't hear any of this stuff that we're hearing from like back home. My wife was telling me like, oh, they're saying that you guys aren't doing this, femaus not doing that. But the locals there, they really appreciate having thats there. There was a lot of criticism in response, and I mean no

reflection on you guys. You guys are just you're a tool. But you know, with the government's response locally, regionally, federally, and you know, we were getting emails and stuff back here to our station and then they would be related to me back there as they were listening to my reports.

But you guys were sort of you didn't realize that you were working in the center of this very political firestorm and that this was a very very sensitive issue, and then a lot of the back and forth it was going on during the press conferences and stuff, and it all boiled down to how the remains were being treated because I don't know if you were aware, but FEMA was actually releasing video and photos of the impact zones of you guys doing your work,

and then they had to be shut down because the elders of Maui were like, that's still showing our ancestors or the dead, even though it's all ashes and you would never know by looking at it, you could never pick it out in a photo. But that's how sensitive it was getting. The FEMA had to stop putting out the federal government had to stop putting out photos of the scene, which also encroaches on, you know, transparency. Not that you guys had to worry about any of that. You had your own

stuff to do. But how many hours a day would you typically work? We're working probably eight hours a day. Yeah, we started let's say seven to four typically, And they started to this. The whole operation, the recovery operation was knine based, because, like you were saying right now, that everything was ash. So if we had teams going in crawling on their hands and knees trying and search for this. It'd be titty is. But it was as fast as these knaanges could work. So yeah, and then

they ended up calling in a lot more. Yeah. So it got to a point where we were trying to start earlier in the morning so that way we could get more out of the dogs and earlier instead of at three four o'clock when it's the hottest time of the day. So it varied between six and eight hours a day. And however, we notice our dogs, if they're capable of continuing working, then us as handlers would be like, yeah, we could continue, but we were the advocates for them, we'd be

like, no, they're done for today. So walk us through how that works. So the dogs pick up on a scent and you guys walk over and you look, and if it's a pile of ash, how do you know that was a human being? So we'll have let's say six hits on that target odor and he's flocus bark alert. I'll put him up. I won't reward him because I'm not one hundred percent sure it's human remains. We'll send Harper or another canine. If that same dog, we won't give them

any idea where it is. We won't give the handler any idea. We'll just say, hey, run your dog over this area, let me see what happens. So if that dog also alerts in the same area, then we have two confirmed hits. Then we bring in a friendsic anthropologist. The friendsic anthropologists will come. They'll take a look at the remains and confirm whether or not it's animal human and how are they able to confirm that? Right there? Like, that's funny, we were asking the same questions because they

just eyeball in. They're like, that's human remains or that's animal. They just eyeball it. Were impressed. They just eyeball it. That's their job. Yeah, just like our job is to go send the dogs to go find it, their job is to identify. So when we come back, we'll wrap things up. I've been talking with Nick Bartell and Any Ruiz, But first this is unsolved with Steve Gregory on can'f I. You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand kf I AM six forty live everywhere on the

iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory, and this is unsolved. Before we get back to the guys, just a quick reminder, you're gonna hear some wind at times. We apologized, but we had to be outside so the guys could take care of their dogs. Welcome back. We're talking with Nick Bartel

Eddie Ruiz from the La County Fire Department. They are both canine search specialists and we have been talking not only about the sort of human remains dogs program within the department, but how it was put to work on the island of Maui, because after all, some of that was still unsolved and as of this taping, there are still I believe are two that are still on identified

and so that that was a huge issue on the island there. And I know you were talking about the anthropologists that were there, the forensic anthropologists. Then DNA was a big part of that too, because once they identified whether it was human or animal, then the DNA specialists had come in. They were doing the rapid DNA and they were trying to figure it all out.

That was a very very chaotic scene over there because some people had disappeared and gone up into the hills and didn't check in, so they were they were presumed unaccounted for. That was you know, all the years that I had been covering disasters like that. That was one of the most complicated and the most frenetic disasters that ever been to, just because of the sheer miscommunication and people just all over the place doing their own thing. And did you find

that life over there moves a little slower than life moves here. I love the people of Hawaii, but yeah, from my time being there on vacation and things like that, there's no sense of the sense of there was really no sense of urgency there. I noticed. I could tell coming from Los Angeles that you know, you have to learn. Even the speed limits were all very slow, and it was just it was a very interesting. It

was an interesting experience. I'm just sorry it was under those conditions. But after your eight days and you've come back and you said, you've already said you can't comment on the on the number of human remains you found are the number of people presumably you found, Let me ask it to you this way. Can you quantify whether or not your mission was successful? As long as we bring closure to one family and one friend, I feel like it's mission

accomplished. And I know they're, like you said, they're still probably too missing but for me personally, if I could bring closure to one family because we found one diseased family member, that's a victory for me processing it. When you come back, how did the dogs fare? I mean, obviously they travel okay by plane, Yes, and they're pretty seeming like they're pretty resilient. How did the dogs do when you brought them back? You know? How how were they? When were they tired? Were they you know?

How did they do that? As far as Harper, she was tired that I could tell. We I gave her about two weeks of just being a dog, being a house dog, being a station dog. I gave her two weeks just to relax and then it was back to training again. But you could tell she was tired. And you wouldn't be able to tell because this whole hour or two that we've been here, she's been playing with her toy. Not so but she was so tired coming back from MAUI.

How about you, guys? So Elle County Fire Department did a great job. They put us in touch with peer support members who would call us Texas throughout her deployment kind of check in, make sure mental health, everything is

good. And then when we landed back at Lax. Our peer support members that were assigned to us were there waiting for us, either at our headquarters or at the airport when we landed, so if we had anything to talk about, or but at the fire station when we sit around and drink coffee in the morning, that's our peer support. Sure, like the camaraderie we have with each other, Like Eddie and I are really close now and we're able to communicate and talk about things, and it just kind of makes it

less real. But the things, yeah, the things you saw, the things we see on a daily basis in our job. It's just it compounds, for sure. But how about Maui though? How did Mali fare for you? Guys? It? So that was the first one where I was like, all right, this one is gonna kind of stick with you and why and just enviroment. So basically, when I was watching the documentary about Paradise, I think it was on Netflix, right, you could see these

people actively trying to flee and getting overrun. Right. And when we get our fires here in La County, typically we get the sant Ana winds they blow towards the coast, So when it burns in Malibu, it starts at the mountains, it works towards the ocean. So that's kind of what I anticipated when I got to Maui. And then when we saw the footage and heard about what happened when it actually started at the coast and burned up the

coastline and in it's like these people had nowhere to go. And then we started seeing footage of the flames laying horizontal and basically just torching everything in its path. It became more real, Like it's one thing just to go search through rubble, and it's another thing to hear the stories of the people that were there, and then to start to kind of put yourself in their footsteps.

And we're not searching all the time, like we have downtime. If Harper searching and SIXES is up, I can start going through things in my own mind and starting to put yourself in the in the shoes of the firefighters there, the police, just the civilians. It it's tough to think about, we had nowhere to go? What did you do with your downtime?

I rest it because it was exhausting, not not physically, but it was mentally exhausting there and I felt it that was the first time, I felt like each day I was like going back to to our BOO, which was at a hotel and just resting, and that's all I did is eat and rest. BOO is a base of operations. Its kind of our headquarters. But yeah, so downtime, we there's a gym at the hotel that we can kind of stay out of the public, guye, which was nice.

We could work out a little bit, get on the treadmill or something, kind of sweat out and decompress. But like Eddie said, yeah, I was just kind of hunkering down together in the room and just kind of getting ready for the next day. Well, guys, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time and being so candid and personal. I think it's important for people to know kind of what you've been through and what your dogs

have been through, and kind how you contribute to the overall process. So I just can't believe that you guys go through this on a daily basis and how you have to process it. So I appreciate your time very much. Thanks for having us, and I'm glad you guys made it back safely. And I hope that I hope it's someday you can look back on this and be able to compartmentalize it and don't worry too much about it. I appreciate that. Thank you. Guys, appreciate it. Thank you, and that's

going to do it. Unsolved with Steve Gregory. The radio show is a production of the KFI News Department for iHeartMedia, Los Angeles. The program is produced by Steve Gregory and Jacob Gonzalez. If you have a tip on this or any other case we've highlighted a comment or a case, just press pound two fifty on your cell phone and say the keyword unsolved. Or if you're listening live on the iHeartRadio app, press the red microphone icon and leave us

a message. Coming up, It's Before the Coast with Clay Row. This is KFI AM six forty. KFI AM six forty on demand