Los Alamitos Flight Bears Aid to Turkey : Relief: A load of medical supplies aboard an Air National Guard cargo jet will stock field hospitals treating quake victims.

Five tons of medical supplies bound for quake-ravaged Turkey left Los Alamitos on Wednesday aboard a California Air National Guard cargo plane.

Dispatched from the Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center, the supplies will be delivered to mobile hospitals treating people injured in the 7.4-magnitude earthquake that shook the city of Izmit and its surroundings three weeks ago.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank California and in fact the whole Western United States . . . for the helping hand that was extended,” said Turkey’s consul general in Los Angeles, Hayri Hayret Yalav, who came to see the shipment off.

The cargo was a “symbol of our deepest sympathy for [the Turks’] tremendous pain,” said Michael Flores, Gov. Gray Davis’ secretary of foreign affairs, who also attended the event.

The governor’s office was instrumental in getting the approvals necessary to get the supplies off the ground and into a state-operated plane, said Richard Walden, president of Operations USA. The nonprofit group organized the effort with surgical tools, artificial skin, bandages and other supplies donated by Allegiance Health Care, a hospital supply company.

The relief effort also will help prepare the Guard for a major earthquake here, Walden said. Flying to Miami will also be good training for the two full-time staffers and four volunteers manning the C-130 aircraft carrying the supplies, said John Iffland, commander of the 146th Airlift Wing.

In Miami the cargo was to be transferred to a Turkish Airlines plane. It will go duty-free through customs in Istanbul on Saturday before reaching Izmit.

Operations USA has gathered another 55 tons of aid for Turkey, but no decisions have been made about how it will be shipped, officials said.