Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 18, 1990 TAG: 9007180090
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES HIGHER EDUCATION WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Frederick Krimgold, a self-described "earthquake mitigation specialist," will serve as technical adviser to a 25-person search and rescue team that left Andrews Air Force Base on Monday evening for the Philippines.
Earlier Monday, a quake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale jolted Manila and surrounding Luzon island, killing some 200 people. Hundreds more were reported hurt in collapsed buildings.
Krimgold specializes in search-and-rescue operations after destructive tremors, grimly examining the twisted steel and collapsed walls and then deciding if rescuers should risk their own lives to pick through the rubble and extract trapped residents.
In an interview last March, the bespectacled professor recalled canceling searches in Armenia as 100 townspeople helplessly looked on and wondered if their missing friends or relatives were trapped inside. Some would grab his hand and plead with him to allow the search to continue.
The same heart-rending task may await him in the Philippines.
After a stop in California and a mid-flight refueling over the Pacific Ocean, Krimgold and his colleagues were scheduled to arrive at Clark Air Force Base outside Manila at 10:50 p.m. Tuesday, a Tech spokeswoman said.
The team, dispatched by the federal Office for Foreign Disaster Assistance, includes six firefighters from Fairfax County, six firefighters from Dade County, Fla., dog handlers and their charges - such as Sarah Owen of Blacksburg and her Labrador retriever - and a five-person medical team.
Associate dean of Tech's College of Architecture and Urban Studies, Krimgold has been studying earthquakes and their effects on buildings since 1970. He picked through the rubble of the 1985 Mexico City quake, as well as last fall's Loma Prieta tremor near San Francisco.
by CNB