Carrboro officer and her dog helped the flooded
CARRBORO, NC (WTVD) -- Officer Lori McLamb with the Carrboro Police Department and her dog, Kiser, have a job not everyone may be aware exists.
Outside of serving the public as a police officer, she is also a K-9 Search Specialist for FEMA. She is one of only three people in North Carolina with that title.
She has always had a love for dogs and training dogs and wanted to fuse those passions together in service work. She and Kiser have been together for five years. She trained him herself for a year and was then certified to volunteer for FEMA. The first test of their training and partnership came when a major weather system came barreling up the East Coast dumping days and days of rain in South Carolina causing devastating floods.
With one night's notice, McLamb and Kiser went to Virginia Beach last weekend to join an 80 person task force to then head south to South Carolina.
"There were houses under water on one side of the street and on the other side of the street they were fine," said Officer McLamb.
She said they would search road by road and house by house looking for anyone in need.
"Mostly there were people who needed water, because there wasn't a clean water source or needed to get their medications," said McLamb.
The days of looking for those to help stretched sometimes 12 hours long and they were mostly on foot, if not by boat.
Although by her side the entire time, McLamb said Kiser's skills for search and rescue were not needed. But on this first mission together she found out he also served a purpose in boosting morale for the team and for the people they were helping.
McLamb just got back from her mission on Monday and already is back on the overnight shift on Tuesday.
