Sniff test: Avispa joins PA Fire Department for explosives ordnance detection

Published 10:03 am Wednesday, November 21, 2018

 

By Ken Stickney

ken.stickney@panews.com

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Port Arthur City Council members had the pleasure Tuesday of meeting their Fire Department’s newest employee. Had they wished, they could have shaken her paw.

Avispa — that’s Spanish for “wasp” — joined the Fire Department on Oct. 15, when handler Antonio Mitchell, a captain and deputy fire marshal, picked her up from Somerset, Texas, where she was trained as an explosives ordnance detection dog.

Avispa, a Belgian malinois, replaced Sirik, a German shepherd who died suddenly recently at 8 years old.

Avispa, 3, follows a string of dogs who’ve served the department since shortly after the Columbine school shooting in 1999. They’ve included Ivar, Teski, Zeus and Sirik.

Mitchell says he’s wholly confident in the dog’s ability — she trained at Global Training in Somerset — although he described her as “a little past green,” having not been tested in a “live environment” yet.

“She will find what she has to find,” he said.

Mitchell said the dog started training at about 6 months old and should be expected to work about seven or eight years. The Belgian malinois lives to about 10 or 12, he said, but with age, dogs can lose their drive to sniff and hunt.

He said Avispa has already been all over the region, in that Port Arthur is the only city for a wide area that has an EOD dog. He said the nearest EOD dog may be in Conroe. The dog has been on some 100 to 200 calls already; these include calls to the nearby industrial plants.

City Council members accepted donations of $10,000 from the Southeast Texas Plant Managers Forum, Port Arthur Industry Group, and the Helping Heroes effort of Flint Hills for the purchase of the dog and support for its environment, about $12,000 in all.

“We were in a bad spot when the last dog died,” Fire Chief Larry Richard said, and noting that city leaders were struggling to pronounce the new dog’s name, he added that she came to the Fire Department already named Avispa.