Orange County Rescue Experts : Firefighters Flying to Armenia

Two Orange County firefighters who are rescue experts are flying to Moscow todayas part of a team of U.S. and Canadian disaster specialists sent to aid earthquake relief efforts in Soviet Armenia.

Larry Greene, a division chief with the Fullerton Fire Department and an emergency medical specialist, is leading the 8-man team. With him is Mike McGroarty, a battalion chief with the La Habra Fire Department and an expert in heavy rescue techniques.

Greene and McGroarty, who left Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) for Washington Tuesday afternoon, were the only team members selected from the West Coast. But efforts to help the victims of last Wednesday’s 6.9 earthquake continued Tuesday throughout Orange County, home to an estimated 10,000 Armenians. A key organizing post for the relief effort is the Armenian Apostolic Church of Orange County-Forty Martyrs, a Santa Ana church and school where the Armenian Relief Society’s Orange County chapter is located.

More than $25,000 in cash donations have been received, said volunteer Mardig Herculian, who is among the three people overseeing the relief effort in Orange County. He said the Armenian Relief Society’s regional headquarters in Glendale had received more than $3 million in donations as of Tuesday.

Two kidney dialysis machines were donated Tuesday by St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, and they are expected to be flown out of Los Angeles today, said Dr. Dominick Gentile, a nephrologist and medical director of St. Joseph Hospital Renal Center.

Gentile said Dr. Garo Tertzarkian, a Cowan Heights urologist and transplant surgeon on the hospital staff who already is in Armenia as part of the relief effort, contacted the hospital this week and said the dialysis machines were direly needed.

Beckman Instruments Inc. is donating high-tech medical instruments, including blood-analysis devices, which were scheduled to leave LAX late Tuesday night, company spokeswoman Elke Eastman said.

The U.S.-Canadian rescue team is scheduled to land in Moscow on Thursday morning, and a Soviet transport plane will take the team to Armenia on Friday, organizers said. Special entry visas and a flight from Moscow to Armenia were approved by the Soviet government.

The team will carry its own freeze-dried food, water, tents, cots and special disaster equipment, said Craig Hopkins of the People to People Citizen Ambassador Program in Spokane, Wash., one of the sponsors of the disaster team relief effort. The International Assns. of Fire Chiefs in Washington, of which Fullerton Fire Chief Ron Coleman is president, is the other sponsor. Coleman chose the team of rescue specialists.

Greene, 42, of Canyon Lake, is a 20-year veteran of the Fullerton Fire Department, where he is in charge of paramedic training. He also teaches earthquake preparedness at the National Fire Academy in Maryland.

McGroarty, 39, who lives in La Habra and is a 12-year veteran of the Fire Department, teaches heavy rescue methods around the state. He also chairs the urban Search and Rescue Working Group of the governor’s earthquake task force.