Chris Selfridge and his dog, Riley, arrived at the base of the Twin Towers around ten o'clock on the evening of September 11, after an eight-hour drive.
In the morning, nineteen men, members of the terrorist group al-Qaida, hijacked four planes to carry out the deadliest attack in history.
Two machines will strike the World Trade Center, causing the collapse of the Twin Towers and two other buildings in their wake.
Read also September 11: in New York, the tomb of a missing America
The Fema, the federal agency for emergency situations, then dispatched rescue dogs and their handlers from all over the country. Chris, a 34-year-old firefighter at the time, and Riley, his 4-year-old golden retriever, were among them.
“Nobody expected that
,” says Chris from Johnstown, Pennsylvania today.
It was the largest search and rescue operation in the world. We were all really moved while trying to stay professional. ”
A total of 300 dogs intervened on September 11 and the following weeks to search the ruins for survivors.
"Dogs are the most reliable way to detect buried people,"
indicates Christophe Bezzazi, firefighter, technical cyno manager of Ardèche and member of the NGO Firefighters of the international emergency.
Technology has yet to make a tool that can detect as well as they do. There are scanners that can perceive movement, for example. But thanks to their flair, dogs know how to differentiate human scent. "
Their nose contains, in fact, more than 300 million olfactory receptors. By comparison, humans only have 6 million.
300 dogs intervened after September 11 in search of survivors.
STAN HONDA / AFP
Canines can be trained in two different techniques: tracking or questioning.
"Tracking is the police dogs who only follow the trail of the missing person
," says Jean-Claude Juste, former firefighter in Hérault and national cynotechnical referent for Civil Protection.
They are made to smell residual odors from the person, so you have to own an object.
For the questioning, no object is needed, it is the technique of the hunting dog.
He sets off on a diagonal ground from right to left, the wind in his nose, and he searches for the victim.
In the rubble, it's the same technique as questing, except it's not in the forest. ”
"No survivors"
Rescue dogs are trained to find living people from an early age. If they
"are very reliable"
, training of about
"300 hours"
is however necessary before they are operational, notes firefighter Christophe Bezzazi.
“As soon as they are two or three months old, we prepare them to search through a game in exchange for a reward
.
And then, they are also prepared to work in a complicated environment. Because in the rubble there is not only the smell of the living victim, there is the smell of death, of kerosene, in the case of September 11, for example. The most difficult thing is to be able to filter the odors and therefore during their training, we impose parasites on them. "
Rubble, metal, gas, debris… The
“parasites”
were indeed numerous at the scene of the September 11 attacks. Denise Corliss, 36 at the time, and her dog Bretagne - who was two years old - were prepared for these delicate grounds. Members of the Texan unit of Fema, they trained in urban areas, for missions such as "
environmental disasters"
causing, for example, building collapses. The engineer by training, however, did not expect such a ravaged landscape.
“Even though we were ready, this was my first assignment.
We arrived a week after the attacks with Brittany and 70 other dogs.
We had seen the pictures on television of course, but when I saw the towers in real life, it took my breath away.
It was much more devastated in reality, ”
remembers Denise, moved.
Brittany, a golden retriever dog who intervened after September 11.
Denise corliss
Before obtaining Fema certification, dogs and their handlers must train for three years.
“The training never ends,
however
,
notes Chris Selfridge.
It's a daily job, sometimes we train up to eight hours a day. It's not like teaching dogs to sit, if you don't train them daily, they lose their abilities. "
Unlike Riley and Brittany, two-thirds of the dogs assigned to find survivors were not, however, accustomed to urban terrain.
“For many, it was a first,
confirms Christophe Bezzazi.
The dog accustomed to the wild environment knows how to select the scent of a victim.
But, when there are 1.8 million tonnes of rubble, it is huge.
He must be accustomed to rubble, to noise, otherwise it is more complicated. "
Read alsoThe families of the victims are fighting so that the last secrets of September 11 are finally revealed
In addition to the particularly dangerous terrain, due to the heap of debris but also to cut power lines, the dog handlers present were not prepared for the considerable number of victims (2,977 people were killed).
“We were hoping to find a lot of survivors,”
recalls Chris Selfridge.
But that was not the case.
There were no survivors. ”
“Even a week after the attacks, I thought I would discover at least one survivor,
regrets Denise Corliss.
There were so many missing ... I think I never stopped hoping, otherwise I won't do this job. "
The last person found alive, hours after the attacks, was detected by a dog, but it was the only one.
"Feasts"
The canines still struggled to search again and again, for hours and sometimes for ten days. Night shifts came to take over from those who had combed the field all day. Chris and Riley were in the daytime workforce, working up to 12 hours a day. Used to detecting living victims, however, the dogs began to develop a form of frustration. Their behavior is indeed different in the face of death. Christophe Bezzazi, dispatched to Lebanon with his dog last summer after the explosion that killed 220 people, knows something about it:
“When they find a dead body, they don't have a positive attitude. All the subtlety of the master is to know the behavior of his dog. Usually it won't even go, it will just scratch a little. Last year in Beirut, parts of the bodies of Lebanese firefighters were detected by dogs and we were able to identify them all. It is very important for families, so that they can grieve. ”
Unlike his American colleagues, Christophe knew he would not find any survivors in Lebanon. To motivate his dog assigned to the site of the explosion, he therefore set up stratagems.
“On long missions, the dog can be psychologically affected, and refuse to return for example. This is normal, since for him it is a game. So, when there is little chance of finding living people, we decide to “treat” the dog. That is, a fake living victim is hiding in the rubble so that the dog can find her. Its very important. In Lebanon, we had these “feasts” three times a day. ”
Chris Selfridge vividly remembers the times when
"his colleagues went into hiding"
so Riley can look for them, not differentiating between a real victim or a fake victim.
“At other times he would pick up a scent and come and tell me he had detected someone when in reality it was a member of the rescue teams doing their job.
I still gave him a reward, ”
Chris laughs.
Read also September 11: the interminable identification of the victims of the World Trade Center, twenty years later
If the dog handlers and their colleagues thus succeeded in comforting the canines, the latter also played a leading role in boosting the morale of the rescuers.
“During our breaks, some came to caress Brittany and then they began to tell their stories,
describes Denise.
Many people were looking for their friends in the rubble, like the firefighters for example. And in a way, Brittany gave them comfort ”.
She also believes that 9/11 shed light, sadly certainly, on the work of rescue dogs.
"Of course they existed long before, but I think a lot of people didn't know what they were capable of doing, 9/11 brought this work to the fore," she
says.
Two exhibitions organized for the 20th anniversary of the attacks pay tribute to the dogs of September 11.
Denise and Brittany at the scene of the September 11 attacks.
Denise corliss
Today, all are dead, most of them of old age and unrelated to the attacks. The last was none other than Brittany, in 2016. Denise Corliss still feels a strong attachment today for the one who accompanied her on several other missions, such as Hurricane Katrina, before retiring and ending her life by his side.
“I had Brittany in 1999,”
says Denise.
With my husband we had just visited Brittany, France. I found this region so beautiful that it has become very dear to me. Hence the first name of Brittany. It was my first dog, she will remain very special. ”
Denise has since had three other intervention dogs. The last, the first female since Brittany, is called Rennes.