{"id":918035,"date":"2026-07-07T06:34:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T06:34:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/918035\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T06:34:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T06:34:21","slug":"la-county-firefighters-k-9s-return-home-from-venezuela-nbc-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/918035\/","title":{"rendered":"LA County firefighters, K-9s return home from Venezuela \u2013 NBC Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"

LA County firefighters and K-9s who were deployed to Venezuela to help with search and rescue efforts following two massive, deadly earthquakes have returned home.<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACoFD) Urban Search and Rescue team returned to the Southland on Monday following a roughly 10-day operation in the earthquake-stricken country.<\/p>\n

Members from the department\u2019s USA-2 team flew to Venezuela to execute aerial and ground damage assessments across areas that were impacted by the natural disasters, while K-9s sifted through the rubble to search for survivors.<\/p>\n

Venezuela\u2019s northern state of La Guaira was struck by powerful back-to-back temblors on June 24, with both 7+-magnitude earthquakes occurring less than a minute apart. As of Monday, more than 3,500 people died in the disaster.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, the K-9s were honored in a touching ceremony that involved medals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese dogs worked alongside their handlers through collapsed structures and dangerous debris, searching for survivors when hope was running thin,\u201d the department wrote in a social media post.<\/a> \u201cRecognition like this reminds us that disaster response is a global effort \u2014 and sometimes the bravest first responders wear a harness instead of a badge.\u201d<\/p>\n

The K-9s and crew were given a hero\u2019s welcome on Monday upon their return home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe keep the Venezuelan people in our thoughts and prayers as they recover and rebuild,\u201d LACoFD said online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LA County firefighters and K-9s who were deployed to Venezuela to help with search and rescue efforts following…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":918036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2961,20362,224,5337,32322],"class_list":["post-918035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-la","tag-la-county","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-venezuela"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116877306801504191","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}