Some good news from Haiti

Bill Monahan and his border collie Hunter located three girls trapped in the rubble of Tuesday's devastating earthquake in Haiti.

Read the whole story here from PR Newswire.

Monahan and Hunter, who were trained by the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation, were searching the remains of a four-story building in a neighborhood near the Presidential Palace.

After criss-crossing the area, Hunter pin-pointed the survivors' scent under 4 feet of broken concrete and did a sustained "bark alert" to let Bill know where the victims were. Bill spoke with the survivors, then passed them bottles of water tied to the end of a stick. As they reached for the water one of the girls said, "Thank you." Highly trained rescue crews from California Task Force 2 pulled the girls from the wreckage and provided first aid.

In his report this morning from Haiti, SDF Handler Bill Monahan stated, "It would have been a reward to find one person alive. Finding multiple survivors is a huge victory for everyone on the Task Force. It's a giant team effort. From the canines, to the logistics team, to communications, everyone is working at full capacity, using everything we've been trained to do to find survivors. It's an honor to be here."

The National Disaster Search Dog Foundation is located in Ojai, Calif. Its mission is to produce highly trained canine-firefighter disaster search teams.

Here is their Web site.