At the height of Venezuela’s earthquake response, as rescue crews searched crumbled and flattened buildings for signs of life, one worker named Tsunami was supposed to be taking a rare break in the shade.
But even from a distance, people were pausing to snap photos and call out his name.
Tsunami, the black-and-white border collie with one blue eye and another brown, quickly became one of the most recognizable faces of Venezuela’s earthquake response.
Why We Wrote This
As the death toll from Venezuela’s powerful earthquakes reaches nearly 4,500, a black-and-white rescue dog named Tsunami has become a symbol of promise. His handler hopes more dogs like him can be trained ahead of any future disasters.
When the powerful quakes hit on June 24, Tsunami and his handler, Jorge Beens, raced out of their own damaged apartment into a street filled with neighbors taking in the shock of crooked walls and missing loved ones.
Despite the fact that they didn’t know where they would sleep that night, instinct kicked in for Mr. Beens and his trusted furry companion: It was time to go to work.
Tsunami is one of Venezuela’s few trained search-and-rescue dogs. Within minutes the duo was at the rubble of a nearby building, looking for signs of life, Mr. Beens says.
Tsunami’s work has so far helped locate at least 26 survivors and turned him into a symbol of hope for Venezuelans following the 7.2 and 7.5 temblors. Nearly 4,500 people have been confirmed dead in the disaster.
“He started finding lives within 40 minutes of the quake,” Mr. Beens, who directs a disaster response organization, says of his rescue partner.
Nine years ago, Mr. Beens adopted Tsunami from conditions of abuse in Caracas. He brought him home from an animal shelter and quickly noticed the traits of a good rescue dog: confidence, playfulness, and a desire to please. Since then, the pup has helped save more than 350 lives, deployed after landslides, structural collapses, gas explosions, floods, and the 2023 earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
The dog got his name on his first day living with Mr. Beens when he knocked over a large basin of water, flooding the floor. The handler looked at the mess and found a name that stuck.
“I think it was love at first sight,” Mr. Beens says.
Silence – and communication
For Tsunami, search and rescue is a game, even when the stakes are life and death.
That’s how Mr. Beens trained him. When practicing, someone hides among debris with Tsunami’s favorite toy. The dog searches, finds the person, barks, and receives the toy as his reward.
So when Mr. Beens took him to a collapsed building in the San Bernardino neighborhood of Caracas last month, Tsunami knew the routine.
His first command was to stay silent.
Rhonny Zamora/Special to The Christian Science Monitor
Rescuers called into the debris and waited for a voice, a knock, any sign that someone was alive. Then Tsunami moved in, crossing broken concrete and dust. When he detected what he had been trained to find – traces of human breath, skin, hair, or other scents escaping through the rubble – he stopped and barked.
To his human colleagues, that meant “dig here.”
To Tsunami, it means happiness. But there is no time to rejoice.
“We keep working. We don’t have time to celebrate,” Mr. Beens says.
For the past decade and a half, Mr. Beens has directed a canine disaster-response team in Caracas. He founded the group after working abroad in disaster management, including in Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil.
But his fascination with rescue dogs began much earlier. As a child, he remembers watching a neighbor who belonged to a police canine brigade.
“The man and his dog moved together as a team,” he says. “I was struck by the bond.”
Later, as a student in La Guaira, Mr. Beens volunteered during the deadly 1999 mudslides, one of Venezuela’s worst natural disasters. There, he saw Mexican canine teams.
“The image stayed with me.”
“A marriage”
Tsunami often works at night, when disaster zones are quieter and rescuers have a better chance of hearing faint sounds from under the rubble.
For Mr. Beens, Tsunami is his life companion. The dog lives with him, goes to work with him, and trains with him at least three times a week. They practice in different conditions and settings: rain, open areas, piles of debris.
Courtesy of Donato Spinelli
“This is a marriage,” Mr. Beens says, adding that a strong bond is what makes a canine rescue team effective. He keeps one eye on the dog as he speaks and Tsunami seems to enjoy the attention, leaning into the pats and scratches.
A handler must read the dog’s movements, changes in behavior, and signals, Mr. Beens says. The dog must trust the handler enough to move across unstable ground, and through noise, dust, rain, and crowds. Not every dog is cut out for the work. They need to be in control, focused, and have a strong instinct to connect. In Tsunami, Mr. Beens saw those qualities early.
“He wanted to please me,” he says. “To share, to make me happy.”
In recent days, Tsunami has become a bright spot in Venezuela’s painful national moment. Locals are sharing pictures of him, and creating art inspired by him.
One person commenting on a social media post of a mural featuring Tsunami – his long tongue hanging to the side and Venezuelan flags placed prominently on his orange emergency vest – played on his name and the brief tsunami warning issued on the Venezuelan coast in June. “There was a tsunami alert,” the person wrote, “but it was the warning of a dog who would come to save many lives – and behind him, a sea of volunteers from Venezuela and beyond.”
Now that the window for finding survivors in Venezuela has closed, Tsunami will step back from rescue work. But it won’t be the end of his service.
Tsunami will visit schools and communities across the country, with support from Perros Extremos, a dog-training organization that has rallied support around the border collie during this emergency.
Tsunami’s life-saving work shouldn’t end with admiration for one dog, says Donato Spinelli, co-director of Perros Extremos. He believes the international attention the animal has garnered could become a lesson in preparedness.
“Dogs can make a difference when every minute matters,” Mr. Spinelli says.
And hopefully, Mr. Beens says, the future will be filled with “more Tsunamis,” prepared to help.