Dogs help Boscastle rescue teams

Helicopters cannot fly until Frankie has finished his work

Two South Yorkshire police sniffer dogs are taking part in the operation to clean-up a Cornish village devastated by flash floods on Monday.

Springer spaniel Eddie with his handler Martin Grime and border collie Frankie with handler John Ellis are helping rescue teams to scour the debris.

While no-one has been killed in the Boscastle floods, police have not ruled out the possibility of finding bodies.

The two dogs are the only ones in the country trained for the operation.

Human blood

An air exclusion zone has been maintained over the village because the noise distracted the dogs.

A South Yorkshire police spokesman said: "The dogs are the only two in Britain who are capable of finding human blood in small quantities.

"They are trained to seek buried remains and are put to search on areas which look disturbed, such as broken branches, rubble or turned over earth."

At the end of last year, the FBI sought the dogs' help in a ten-year-old murder investigation in the United States.