WHITBY -- The shoe-length piece of hose being chewed by a Toronto Police dog bore no resemblance to a small boy supposedly trapped in a school after a tornado.

But it was all that was needed to put the dog and the only full-scale Heavy Urban Search and Rescue (HUSAR) team in eastern Canada through a realistic, 72-hour simulated disaster exercise at the weather-worn barn owned by the Guthrie family yesterday.

KEEP 'EM HAPPY

Const. Sandy Manson praised Cyprus, her 3-year-old yellow Labrador, as if someone had been really trapped and found alive.

Keeping HUSAR dogs happy is essential, Toronto Fire Service (TFS) Capt. Shawn Sweeney said. After sniffing out only bodies from the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, "the dogs were showing signs of depression," so live humans were "planted" to cheer them with success.

Cyprus is one of four HUSAR dogs, whose ranks could eventually be doubled. The team of 80 humans will also expand, to 120, "but training takes time," Toronto Capt. Doug Silver said.

The dog's searches only began after experts surveyed hypothetical damage and reported "survivors" in the barn, which was shored up with wood "rakes" in case of collapse. Nearby, another team painstakingly lifted a 1,363-kilo cement slab supposedly trapping victims.

It was the team's first field deployment since training began in 2003, TFS Deputy-Chief Terry Boyko said.

Working in shifts, the firefighters, police, paramedics and engineers "train together to the same standard" across North America, Silver said.

Using coded symbols sprayed at disaster sites to identify teams, dates, possible hazards plus rescue access points, they draw on experience, using power generators, radios, all-terrain vehicles, cutting tools, fibre-optic cameras, modified industrial gear and structural expertise the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers perfected for building searches.

THEATRE COLLAPSE

Financed by taxpayers, five teams based across Canada can be deployed locally, as Toronto's fledgling unit was when the Uptown Theatre collapsed four years ago.

For big disasters, a HUSAR group can hit the road or fly across borders -- as the Vancouver crew did to help in Louisiana last month and in New York in 2001.

Rescue training is essential, but as the B.C. crew learned, nothing prepared them for the reality of New Orleans, Vancouver task force boss Tim Armstrong said.

"There was total devastation," Armstrong, 46, said after monitoring the Toronto teams he helped train. "You could smell it as soon as you drove up."

Worse, he said they had to drive by bodies on the freeways, "because there was nowhere to take them and most hospitals weren't open." Wading through sewage and spilled crude oil, his team commandeered boats, set up medical facilities and saved 119 victims in seven days.