CENTER POINT, Texas – Kite, a human remains and detection (HRD) dog from South Carolina, is helping locate victims of the deadly Hill Country floods.
The 4-year-old dog and her handler, Cheryl Phillips, have been searching the Guadalupe River for more than a week, successfully finding remains to return to families across Texas.
“Everything is based off of [Kite’s] nose,” Phillips said.
Phillips explained that Kite can locate bodies that people can’t see or detect.
“We have been up in Leander,” Phillips said. “Mostly the first week I was all in this area [Center Point].”
Phillips said Kite has also found people who died in bodies of water and debris in North Carolina before and after Hurricane Helene.
“[Kite has worked] a bunch of stuff from cold cases with sheriff’s officers to cases just like this where there’s just huge natural disasters,” Phillips said.
Kite has played a key role in recovering flood victims in the Hill Country. Phillips said she will have Kite search and re-search areas where remains have been previously found to ensure a thorough recovery.
TheTXLoop asked Phillips about the difficulty in locating people in water, as officials had previously stated that the number of missing people dropped drastically from 97 to three.
“It’s like finding a needle in a haystack,” Phillips said. “Everything looks so different this time than it did last time when I was here. So, it’s hard for me to tell exactly where we’re searching compared to last time because they’ve cleared up so much and it just looks so different.”
This is why it has been crucial to have various search teams searching for the remains of missing people.
“I do search and rescue, and then we work with other organizations that do a lot of relief,” Taylor Fontenot with 50-Star SAR said.
The team, 50-Star SAR, resembles a group of search and rescue (SAR) volunteers from all over the country, hence the 50 stars. The group travels to any state in need of search, rescue and recovery assistance.
“I do a lot of flood [recover],” Fontenot said. “I grew up on the bayou, so I’m really good with a boat. A lot of my guys are swift water certified.”
No matter how small the number of missing people is, Kite, Cheryl, Fontenot and the 50-star team said they will continue their efforts in the Hill Country.
“It’s still worth it,” Phillips said. “It’s still worth the search to find one individual. It’s stressful and it’s gratifying because you know that at the end of the day, if you find someone’s loved one, you’re giving them some piece of closure.”
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