Tara, age 16, Ipswich, Mass. She arrived at the World Trade Center site at about 1 a.m. the day after the attacks. At that time, her owner says, ‘‘there was a lot of hope that people would be found alive.’’ Over her nine-year career, she located the victim of a crane collapse and participated in wilderness searches. She died earlier this year.
Of the more then 100 Search and Rescue dogs that were deployed by FEMA 10 years ago with their owner / handlers to sift through what was left of the World Trade Center only 12 are still alive. All have white around their muzzles, eyes, and on their chin and all had long careers after they left ground zero and are now retired. Dumas was introduced to the project when she was researching a separate project on military dogs returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan when she learned about the dogs of 9/11. She took the dogs sent by FEMA as her domain and photographed the 15 that were still living from March through May of this year.
Orion, one of the surviving dogs that searched the Twin Towers site after Sept. 11, 2001, tracks a scent during training in 2009. Read more:
Orion the now 13 year old Golden Retriever who lives in Vacaville, California with owner and handler Robert Macaulay, was one of the Search and Rescue dogs sent by FEMA to New York City to help locate victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center. It was Orion’s first collapsed-building assignment. Because the dog had just passed the first of two certification tests, Macaulay said, they weren’t sent until two weeks after the attack. Two weeks after the attack and everyone new that the only thing that could be found were remains. Orion found three sets of remains. His most successful search was of an outdoor patio area, 10 stories up.
Orion is now retired and is no no longer able to participates in official searches. “But part of the bargain is that even when he is retired, I try not to let him know that,” Macaulay said. He still goes out on training with his dog nephew Helios who is 4 years old and currently working as a search and rescue dog.
For being the age equivalent of a human about 95 years old, “he’s still darn spry and active,” Macaulay said.
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About Retrieved:
Charlotte Dumas has completed a moving series of portraits featuring the fifteen surviving rescue dogs that helped emergency crews search for survivors after the attacks of September 11. Covering over a dozen states, Dumas photographed the retired dogs in their familiar surroundings, to emphasize the similarity to their human veteran counterparts. The portrayed rescuers, who fearlessly joined their human companions into the aftermath of the terrorist attack, embody a decade coming to a close.
