Ventura County Pitches In to Aid Quake Area : Disaster: Seabees and Red Cross workers have been dispatched to bolster the efforts to restore utilities and help victims.

Ventura County residents were quick Wednesday to join in the relief effort for victims of Tuesday’s killer earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Two-hundred Seabees assigned to the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Port Hueneme were airlifted to the stricken area to help restore water and sewer service to military families in the region.

Sixty people were mobilized at the Channel Islands Air National Guard station at Point Mugu by leaders of the California Air National Guard, who sent four relief planes carrying medical supplies and police to the earthquake area.

And a trio of Red Cross volunteers from Ventura were dispatched by truck to deliver cots, blankets and other supplies for use by Bay Area residents left homeless by the temblor.

Ventura County Red Cross officials issued an appeal for donations of cash and blood and for extra volunteers willing to work in the quake-ravaged region in the coming weeks.

“The Red Cross’ national disaster fund was already depleted by Hurricane Hugo,” said Lenore Gabel, a spokeswoman for the relief agency’s Ventura chapter. “The best thing people can do now is continue to make contributions of cash.”

Volunteers Betty Jimenez of Oxnard and Larry Dawes and Robert Lefever of Ventura were dispatched with a vanload of supplies to Burlingame late Wednesday morning, Gabel said.

Dawes and Lefever were advised that they would be asked to spend the remainder of the week shuttling emergency supplies around the Bay Area.

Jimenez--who is a leader of the Red Cross disaster team in Oxnard--was told to stay in the earthquake area for at least three weeks.

Gabel said that 300 other trained volunteers are available in Ventura County and that training sessions have been scheduled for next week to beef up that force.

Methods of dealing with general emergency relief, damage assessment and emergency assistance for families will be taught Tuesday night and the weekend of Oct. 28-29 at locations to be determined later, she said.

County residents willing to donate blood should contact United Blood Services at (805) 654-1600, she said. Blood types O positive, O negative and A negative are especially needed, although all blood types will be accepted, Gabel said.

People willing to donate cash can do so at any Bank of A. Levy branch or by sending a check to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund at P.O. Box AR, Ventura 93002, she said.

Tuesday’s Bay Area temblor came as county Red Cross officials continued to solicit donations to help finance continuing relief work for victims of Hurricane Hugo, which devastated parts of the Caribbean and South Carolina last month.

As of Wednesday, county residents had contributed $28,000. Local Red Cross administrators had set a goal of $62,100 in donations.

Two area volunteers--Dale Carnathan of Ojai and Carol Holmes of Agoura--have worked in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, since Hugo’s 100-m.p.h. winds raked the area.

The Port Hueneme Seabees were accompanied by forklifts, trenchers and other heavy equipment when they were ferried to the Bay Area on Wednesday by C-130 Hercules cargo planes, said Connie Taylor, spokeswoman for the Naval Construction Battalion Center.

Taylor said about 2,000 families living on Navy bases in the San Francisco region were left without water or sewer service. She said construction experts from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 3 were also being assigned to emergency runway repair duties at the Alameda Naval Air Station.

She said it was unknown whether the Seabees will also be asked to help with civilian rescue efforts that were under way Wednesday in San Francisco, where some apartment buildings were reported to have collapsed, or in Oakland, where a section of double-decked freeway fell atop hundreds of motorists.

Some Port Hueneme-based Seabees who were completing a routine training session at Fort Hunter Liggett east of Monterey were rushed directly to the Bay Area, Taylor said.

Some of the same Seabees were also involved in relief efforts after Hurricane Hugo, she said. Eighty-five of them were sent to Charleston, S. C., and 200 others were dispatched to Puerto Rico to help with cleanup work, she said.

Officials of the California Air National Guard said three planeloads of medical supplies were rushed to Travis Air Force Base near San Francisco. A fourth plane carrying police officers for duty in the Santa Cruz area was sent at noon Wednesday to Watsonville, said Lt. Col. David Woolsey.

About 60 guardsmen were mobilized to serve as flight and ground crews for the emergency airlift. Woolsey said the unit was waiting for instructions for additional flights from Guard officials in Sacramento.