K-SAR RESCUE

Several of the founding members of the FGR came to Risk Management through the Search and Rescue Specialty for people lost or buried in highly complex emergencies, with the help of trained dogs, who in the midst of emergency response in much of Latin America it is called K-SAR. If the Binomials (the dogs and the Handlers that handle them) are properly trained, equipped, evaluated and certified, they are the best resource to reduce time, costs and risks when detecting people in highly complex events.

The Psychologist Engels Germán Cortés, K-sar Specialist, has translated the most recent version of the IRO Regulation for Evaluation and Certification of K-SAR Binomials.

This 2019 version brings new elements, compared to the previous regulation:

View and download

We started this activity in 1986 within the Support and Rescue Group of the National University of Colombia at the Bogotá headquarters, GARUN, under the name of RESCUE K-SAR (RESCATE K-SAR). Since 1987 we have received the guidance from the International Emergency Action, AUI of France, with a visit of several of its Instructors to Colombia and the education since 1990 for some of our Volunteers in that country and in Germany.

Since that time, we have introduced the Colombian Red Cross, the Colombian Civil Defense and other local entities into the Specialty. GARUN disappeared in the late 1990s. In 2001, several of its members, already Professionals in various areas and working on various fronts of Risk Management, founded the FGR with objectives beyond emergency response, and we decided that part of their income would be reinvested in supporting the technical development and operational reliability of the K-SAR Specialty, as a social responsibility. With that vision, our instructors and dogs began to guide the first steps of the specialty in Latin America through more than a hundred courses, conferences, workshops, training and tests with all kinds of official operating entities and individuals from Northern Mexico to Patagonia in Argentina. We have published more than 30 technical articles that laid the foundations for work in Spanish on the subcontinent. With our Binomials, we react to earthquakes, mass removals, explosions, terrorist attacks, avalanches, collapses, rural searches and other interventions in Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.

We are in partnership with the International Organization of Rescue Dogs, IRO, which is based in Austria and regulates the practice globall. IRO brings together more than 100 operating entities from more than 40 countries on 4 continents, following the guidelines of the United Nations’ INSARAG. Two of our founders have been elected IRO Delegates for Latin America for several years, and reached the highest technical level as MRT Classifiers (Mission Readiness Test), evaluating and certifying the most advanced Binomials in the world in successive tests in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and Denmark. We have brought top-level instructors and judges to Colombia from Austria, Germany, Slovenia, the United States, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and other nations that lead in the field and have trained, evaluated and certified under international standards dozens of our Binomials, Firefighters Officials and Volunteers, the National Army and other operating entities in many cities. We also advise organizations from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil and Mexico on entrance into the IRO.

We maintain contact and cooperation with Action d´Urgence Internationale, AUI (Non-Governmental Organization based in France), for which we are its representatives in the Americas, not only in the Search and Rescue with Dogs (K-SAR) Specialty. Over time, RESCUE K-SAR evolved from being one organization to becoming a collective of groups and people across various countries. In 2016, we supported the creation of the National Network Association for Search, Locate, and Rescue K-SAR (Asociación Red Nacional de Búsqueda, Localización y Rescate K-SAR) (Non-Governmental Organization based in Colombia), of which we are also active members.

We continue advising various entities such as the Fire Department of Yopal, the Colombian Air Force and others so that their K-SAR Binomials reach a level of operational reliability compatible with international standards. Thus, we maintain the objective of supporting the technical development and operational reliability of the Specialty, but we optimize the impact. We honor our commitment to social responsibility by this and other means.

Conozca cómo mejorar el desempeño de los guías de perros de búsqueda y rescate con el uso de la neurociencia. 

Presentación en español
Presentación en inglés