By Geryl Ogilvy and Nigel Edgar
KUCHING, Dec 5: The state Disaster Management Committee will request funds to acquire another vehicle to transport the Fire and Rescue Department (Bomba)’s K9 dogs on search and rescue missions.
Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas said the unit, based in Serian, only has one vehicle to transports its four-legged officers.
The committee will request the federal government for the new vehicle, as well as seek funds from the state, he added.
“The K9 unit is deployed to help with search and rescue, especially to find victims where the human eyes or ears cannot detect.
“They have proven to be important assets. When it comes to search and rescue, time is life,” he told DayakDaily here when met on Tuesday night.
Uggah said the state government will hold a discussion to improve response times of Bomba’s K9 unit. He believed this is a pressing matter that needed to be addressed.
“The K9 units arrived quite late in the evening to carry out search and rescue at the mall, despite the incident happening hours earlier at around 3.30pm.
“They arrived late due to another search and rescue operations in Lundu but if we have another vehicle, we can at least mobilised the other dogs,” he pointed out.
Uggah had earlier visited the site of the explosion at CityOne Megamall which took place on Tuesday afternoon (Dec 4). The explosion killed three individuals and injured 26 others.
A cadaver dog named Clif was deployed to detect casualties and possible victims still trapped at the site of the blast.
The Sarawak K9 unit’s first batch of six dogs have been involved in three operations since arriving from the United Kingdom.
The trained four-legged officers comprises four English Springer Spaniels comprises Clif, Wilf, Sue, and Bella; a Border Collie named Daisy and a Labrador named Bailey— DayakDaily
