ARMENIA SENDS RESCUERS TO QUAKE-HIT HAITI
Alex DerAlexanian

Asbarez
Jan 14th, 2010

YEREVAN (RFE/RL)-Armenia is sending a 52-strong rescue team to Haiti
to join in the unfolding international relief effort in the Caribbean
nation devastated by a catastrophic earthquake, a government official
said on Thursday.

"The government of the Republic of Armenia has decided to provide
assistance to Haiti, and on the order of the minister of emergency
situations, a rescue team from the Armenian Rescue Service are now
preparing to leave for Haiti," Nikolay Grigorian, a spokesman for
the service, was quoted by RFE/RL as saying.

"Our rescuers will fly to Moscow today and proceed, on a Russian
Emergency Situations Ministry plane, to Haiti where they will take part
in search and rescue operations," Grigorian said. The Armenian rescuers
will have search dogs and special equipment used in such operations, he
said, adding that they will likely stay in Haiti for at least six days.

"The bitter truth is that people are happy even with the discovery
of dead bodies. So it is very important for them to find their loved
ones dead or alive," added the official.

Tens of thousands of people are feared dead and many more believed to
be still trapped alive in the rubble of the 7.0 magnitude quake that
hit Haiti’s capital on Tuesday. News reports from Port-au-Prince
spoke of people crying out from the rubble and others clawing at
chunks of concrete with bare hands and battering at slabs of debris
with sledgehammers to try to free those buried alive.

The first rescue teams from around the world reportedly arrived in
Haiti on Thursday. "Having felt all this on our skin, we could not
have stayed away from the international relief and rescue effort,"
Grigorian said referring to the massive international aid that poured
into Armenia following a similarly devastating earthquake that razed
the country’s northern regions in December 1988.