Echo the dog raises money for charity

Echo with his owner and handler, Crew Manager Mick Dewar

The Fire Fighters Charity is £250 richer thanks to GMFRS search and rescue dog Echo.

Echo is used to helping Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS) in emergency situations but together with his owner and handler, Crew Manager Mick Dewar, he's now taken to charity fundraising.

The search and rescue dog, who has a powerful sense of smell meaning he can search for and locate a missing person quickly, joined Mick in giving a talk to the Rotary Club of Crompton and Royton earlier this year.

Mick said: "It was back in February and I went along with Echo just to give a fire safety talk to the group as I do all the time in between rescues with the Urban Search Rescue (USAR) team.

"Sometimes I take Echo and other times Cracker, GMFRS' Fire Investigation dog and we'll go into schools and Women's Institute groups, all kinds of things really and talk about fire safety and the work that the dogs carry out to help GMFRS' firefighters.

"Anyway, six months had gone by after this particular talk with the Rotary Club and then they wrote to Agecroft Fire Station saying they'd donated money to the Fire Fighters Charity and obviously we were delighted."

In the letter, the Rotary Club members explained how they were so impressed with the work of Echo and the Urban Search and Rescue team as well as the GMFRS Fire Investigation team that they felt they wanted to make a donation to the Fire Fighters Charity.

Station Manager Ian Duckworth said: "It's great that just by working in the community and talking about the work we do here at GMFRS Mick and Echo had such an impact that resulted in such a generous donation.

"The Fire Fighters Charity depends heavily on fundraising events and donations so it's great that as a service we were able to help them again - obviously we've got Echo to thank for that!"

Secretary of the Rotary Club of Crompton and Royton, Derek Morris, said: "We were very impressed with everything Mick Dewar told us about the work the dogs do with Urban Search and Rescue team at GMFRS.

"Every year we have a charity fund and can choose what to do with it and we have a different speaker every other week or so, and Mick's talk had a real impact so we decided to give £250 to the Fire Fighters Charity."

Echo helps specialist firefighters in GMFRS' USAR team, who are called out in emergency situations, such as when a building collapses, to help find anyone who is trapped or injured.

It can often be too dangerous or difficult for firefighters to find a casualty so Echo is then called in to help.

Once Echo has found an injured or trapped person, he will bark alerting the rest of the USAR team.

They can then use cameras and listening devices to find the exact location of the casualty. The highly trained team of firefighters can then carry out the rescue.