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NASHVILLE, North Carolina (WTVD) — A Nash County deputy who spent a week in Venezuela assisting in earthquake rescue operations says the mission left him physically and emotionally drained after working long hours in dangerous conditions.
Deputy Jack Thorpe was deployed through the U.S. State Department following a 4.8-magnitude earthquake that caused widespread destruction. He said he had “pretty much almost no downtime,” adding, “There’s a little bit of sleep here and there, but not much.”
Thorpe shared photos from the mission, showing collapsed high-rise buildings, rubble piles and rescue crews searching for survivors. In one image, he is seen wearing a red helmet and walking across a beam several feet above the ground. He was paired with a K9 named Joey, who squeezed through slabs of concrete to search for trapped people.
A video from the scene shows crews digging after Joey detected a human. Thorpe said a man was pulled out alive one day later.
“It’s always tedious,” Thorpe said. “So, you, when you’re on these buildings and when you’re working these rubble piles, you’re climbing in a place where it’s unstable. It may be shored up properly. It may not. But we have a job to do.”
Thorpe said he helped rescue three people during the deployment. His canine partner also detected more than three dozen people killed in the earthquake.
“Even though the dent we made was very small compared to the entire incident or to the entire disaster,” Thorpe said, “we still went and made a difference. And we were able to bring three people back. And we were able to give closure to at least 38 families.”
Thorpe described extensive devastation and extremely difficult working conditions for both himself and Joey.
“There’s nothing I’ve seen like this, though. I’ve never seen anything like this one,” he said.
He recalled arriving at one site where a man was frantically digging through rubble in search of his wife and two daughters. K9s trained to detect humans did not find anything. Another set of dogs, trained to detect human remains, later confirmed the family had died.
“He knows that his family is gone and deceased, but we confirmed it for him,” Thorpe said. “And so I think that was really hard on him. He actually hugged me. That was pretty tough.”
After returning home, Thorpe spent time decompressing before resuming work with his cadaver dog, Fiji. The dog receives up to 100 requests a year to detect human remains.
In 2024, Fiji located a fisherman’s remains 16 feet underwater at Harris Lake. She has also worked Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina and floods in Texas.
Thorpe runs the North Carolina Troopers Association K9 Unit, a volunteer nonprofit that assists during natural disasters.
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