
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 18, 1994                   TAG: 9401180180
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

VA. TEAM TO JOIN RESCUERS AT U.S. AGENCY'S REQUEST

Rescue teams from Fairfax County, Va., and Montgomery County, Md., were preparing late Monday to leave for Los Angeles to help aid earthquake victims.

Fairfax Fire and Rescue Department and Montgomery County Fire Department officials are among four regional rescue departments mobilized by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to send urban search and rescue teams to California, FEMA officials said.

The agency on Monday also mobilized teams from Phoenix, Ariz., and Puget Sound, Wash. Each team includes 56 medical and rescue specialists from each of the four areas.

"Each team has a search element, a rescue element, a technical element, medical, and four rescue dogs," said Kimberly Vasconez, program manager for FEMA's Urban Search and Rescue program.

FEMA maintains 27 participating regional rescue crews for domestic emergencies. Nine of the teams were put on alert Monday.

The teams include structural and engineering experts, doctors, emergency medical technicians and hazardous materials specialists and have specialized rescue equipment, such as listening devices and saws for cutting concrete and reinforcing steel.

Sgt. Steven Blount, spokesman for the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department, said the Defense Department was arranging Air Force transport planes to take both the Fairfax and Montgomery crews.

The Fairfax team was deployed to assist earthquake victims in Soviet Armenia in 1988; to an earthquake in the Philippines in July 1990; and to Charleston, S.C., during Hurricane Hugo in September 1989.

by CNB