Fire detection dogs in action | Canton Zurich
The dogs are trained to display all known types of fire accelerators. They look for the hydrocarbon of the fire accelerator and indicate the point as precisely as possible. The fire investigator decides on the basis of his case knowledge already determined whether and at which designated points the fire debris will be secured and handed over to the Forensic Institute Zurich for evaluation.
Often a fire site is searched several times. This means that the dog searches the still unchanged place of fire in the first round. For the subsequent searches, layers of rubble are repeatedly removed, mostly down to the original soil. Depending on the fire accelerator and the useful properties of the soil, the molecules evaporate within hours, or they can still get through the dog after weeks. In order to keep the contamination time as short as possible, at the end of each use of the dog, all material and the washed clothes.
In Switzerland, dogs have been trained to search for fire accelerators since 2004. Two dogs are currently operational with the Zurich canton police.
The dog handlers with their dogs meet regularly for joint training with other corps and support each other during operations. A fire detection dog must be very environmentally safe. Neither a trip with the automatic turntable ladder to the workplace nor carrying the dog handler on the back over a ladder should disturb him. In addition, like all sniffer dogs, they must have a search instinct.