To continuously enhance the standards of our country’s rescue dogs; and to integrate dogs of firefighting agencies, private rescue groups and other dog training institutes for achieving effective domestic and international major disaster rescue mission operation, National Fire Agency (NFA), Ministry of the Interior held “National Rescue Dogs IRO (International Rescue Dog Organization) Evaluation Test” at Rescue Dog Training Center of Fire Bureau, Kaohsiung City, from October 6 to 8, 2021. About 40 excellent teams from different governmental and private units participated in this year’s event.
According to the data published by the World Bank, Taiwan is located in one of the world’s high natural disaster risk hotspots. In recent years, our country’s rescue dogs showed that their dexterity and speed can be successfully utilized in rescuing lives during search and rescue missions at the sites of major disasters. The recuse dogs have proven themselves to be good partners of the rescue personnel. In 2020, our country’s IRO evaluation was suspended due to the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, national rescue dog training units have been continuously and actively training their rescue dogs in order to build disaster response capacity.
This evaluation adopts the IRO evaluation standards. Dogs that pass the IRO-A (Intermediate) and IRO-B (Advanced) evaluation are recognized as official rescue dogs and can be dispatched immediately to disaster rescue missions to improve our country’s efficiency in searching and rescuing lives. NFA will continue to promote and integrate rescue dog training related works; and regularly hold rescue dog evaluation tests and workshops. It is our aspiration for Taiwan to become an open platform for exchanging rescue dog training skills in Asia and to further improve our rescue dogs’ capabilities in all aspects.