By Jessica Farrish
PIPESTEM — Lt. Dan, Jenni, Sadie Mae and Jessup were just a few of the investigators who convened at Pipestem Resort State Park in Summers County Monday to train forestry service personnel from four states in how to track arsonists.
The quartet are four-legged detectives — bloodhounds, to be exact.
“When we do a wildland fire investigation, we try to utilize bloodhounds every time in arson investigations,” said John Bird, a forestry investigator with the West Virginia Division of Forestry and a graduate of Fayetteville High School.
Bird and Don Kelley, also of the WVDF, are conducting a Bloodhound K-9 seminar this week for investigators from Texas, Alabama, Georgia and Ohio.
Bird, Kelley and Art Yagel are the only three K-9 officers in the Division of Forestry and all are trained in utilizing bloodhounds in wildfire investigations.
The seminar is aimed at helping forestry officers from other states develop a successful K-9 program for tracking down those who intentionally or accidentally start forest fires.
Monday, Bird and Kelley demonstrated for other officers how efficiently and accurately a bloodhound can track the trail of a scent.
Throughout the week, they will be taking officers to the site of a burned plot so that the officers may pinpoint the origin of the fire.
Locating the origin of a fire within 3 to 5 feet is the human investigator’s job in a wildfire investigator, said Bird.
After the officer has found the origin point and identified a footstep, scuff or other identifying mark left by a human on the scene, the officers will begin working closely with their canine partners.
“Once we find where the person ignited the land fire, we place a sterile gauze in the impression and put it in a Ziploc bag,” said Bird.
The scent is given to the bloodhound — which has been bred over centuries to develop a keen sense of smell.“Humans shed 50,000 skin cells per second,” said Bird. “That’s every second we’re shedding our scent, and the wind takes effect and (the cells) drift down and land on the ground.”
Kelley explained that when a bloodhound is on a trail, the animal’s nose is directed to the ground. Loose folds of skin fall over the eyes, and the breed does not have a well-developed sense of hearing.
“With bloodhounds, it’s all about the smell,” he explained.
Bloodhounds detect the scent left by the shed skin cells, trailing it for miles to a parked vehicle or even to a residence.
“Sometimes they’ll indicate vehicles or sometimes they’ll actually trail the vehicle ... if a person has their window down or ventilation system on,” he said. “They’ll follow that trail.
“They’ll go right to their house.”
The bloodhound is the first step of the investigation, said Bird.
“The bloodhound team is the handler and the dog,” he added. “We kind of work together to find the individual.
I use my knowledge and the dogs use their nose.”
With just three canine officers in the state Division of Forestry, Kelley, Bird and Yagel are kept busy with wildfires in the state.
Bird and Kelley are both close to their bloodhounds.
The officers explained that their dogs — Kelley’s dog is named Sadie Mae — live at their homes and are nearly like family members.
The men and the bloodhounds are on call 24 hours per day, seven days a week.
The bloodhound program is a vital part of solving arsons and accidental forest fires.
Kelley said he’s excited about the opportunity for helping other state’s forestry officers build successful K-9 units this week.
He said he’s also learned from other officers who are attending the seminar.
“John and I take a lot of pride in sharing our experiences and hopefully keep them from making some of the mistakes we made when building our program, as well as sharing some of the successes we’ve had in building our program.
“Hopefully, when they go back home, this will make a difference in building their programs,” added Kelley.
— E-mail: jfarrish@register-herald.com
