Champlain Towers South collapse, Surfside, FL- working canine and environmental samples
Working dogs deployed to disaster settings face exposure risks to environmental contaminants. On June 24, 2021, a 12-story beachfront condominium partially collapsed in Surfside, FL, leading to the deployment working dog search an rescue teams. To determine potential bacterial exposure, DNA was extracted from surface wipes collected from the coat of exposed working dogs, dog reward items, and samples of standing water collected around the building collapse. The resulting DNAs were used to create 16S rRNA V4 amplicon libraries to subsequently sequence and determine associated microbiomes.