Dog rescued from the rubble

The Aug. 24 temblor claimed nearly 300 lives, injured hundreds and left thousands of people either without homes or with homes unsafe to immediately inhabit. Clean up and recovery efforts are continuing in the italian towns devastated by last month’s magnitude 6.2 earthquake. Firefighters made a heartwarming discovery when they returned to the ruins of a home in the hardest hit town of Amatrice: A family’s dog was still alive under the rubble. They rescued a Golden Retriever from a pile of quake rubble after they heard the dog barking, nine days after the temblor struck central Italy.

He had been sleeping on the first floor of the house and his owners on the second when the quake hit. They managed to get out, but Romeo was trapped inside. After searching for him for hours, they were eventually evacuated from the devastated village for their own safety. All hope of finding him alive appeared to have disappeared until Friday evening, when the couple returned to their home in the company of a group of firemen assigned to help them recover key belongings from the rubble. Almost as soon as they came into the tiny medieval village, Romeo heard their voices and began barking. “We immediately began moving masonry from where the barking was coming from and incredibly we got to him and he was in pretty good condition,” told one of the firemen.

A heartwarming discovery!

The dog, called Romeo, appeared to be bewildered at first as it scampered down the mound of broken concrete and other debris, but he appeared to recover quickly, walking around the area, sniffing its surroundings, approaching his rescuers and wagging his tail. Video of the rescue shows firefighters giving the dog some water and carrying him over a pile of rubble to flat ground.