site.btaBansko Mountain Rescuers Finally Have a Bus for Their Search Dogs

The search dogs team of the Mountain Rescue Service with the Bulgarian Red Cross finally has a bus with a dog compartment that provides adequate conditions for rides to and from missions. The all-terrain bus was bought on donations in a dedicated fund-raiser and came together with a pickup truck that the rescuers can use for a year or longer.

"Before that, we used a regular jeep, not specialized one, with the dogs sitting on us, literally," the head of the search dogs team, Atanas Ukov, told BTA. He explained that when the dogs ride together with the rescuers they sense the adrenaline of the men, become overexcited and are not 100% efficient when they work because they are already tired before they start. "The old vehicles we used are museum-grade," Ukov said as he watches an old truck parked outside the rescuers' base in Bansko in the foot of the southern Bulgarian Pirin mountain.

The vehicles are in Bansko because most of the search dogs team is there, said Lyubcho Djolev, a rescuer of the team in the nearby Razlog. "When they are needed elsewhere, in Bulgaria or abroad, they will go there."

The Bansko mountain rescuers and their dogs participated in the rescue efforts after the devastating earthquakes in Turkey in February 2023.

The bus has everything necessary for comfortable ride of the rescuers and the dogs. It has six seats and a separate compartment for the dogs where they can travel and be well-rested when they arrive on a mission, Djolev explained.

Ukov said that the fund-raiser was a joint effort of Galina Vassilcheva, MP Manol Peykov and his friends, Moto-Pfoe and many small donors.

Mountain rescuers rely mostly on donors and well-wishers for equipment, he added. "We are not demotivated but it is certainly tiring," he says of the lack of adequate support from the State. 

In another major recent donation, the Bansko rescuers received two drones.

While this BTA reporter was doing the interview, a German medic with Bulgarian roots, Stefan Maidatschewski, brought a vacuum mattress as a donation for the Bansko team. "In Germany, organizations are often required to renew regularly their inventory while it is still perfectly fine for use, and I have brought here a vacuum mattress which I believe can be of use for the colleagues here. All thus work the boys do, often using make-do equipment, and their enthusiasm, really moved me and I wanted to get in contact and help in some way. When I heard that they were in Turkiye during the big earthquake, I knew I had to do something for the boys here," he told BTA.

In the last few days alone, the mountain rescue teams in Bansko and the nearby Razlog, Dobrinishte, Sandanski and Blagoevgrad went on five difficult missions for search or rescue of people in distress in Pirin.