Rangers Say They Did Not Offer Aid in Canoe Tragedy

Two U.S. Forest Service rangers have acknowledged that they made “no effort” to help four men they saw clinging to a capsized canoe in frigid Elizabeth Lake on Monday, a Forest Service official said Wednesday. One man drowned in the accident.

“They’re pretty badly shaken up at this point in time,” Saugus District Ranger Mike Wickman said of the male and female rangers. “They were very shocked.

Saying that learning the circumstances surrounding the accident in the Antelope Valley lake is “our highest priority,” Wickman said the names of the two rangers and any possible disciplinary action against them would be announced at the completion of an investigation, expected within a few days.

A Forest Service investigator contacted the two rangers within hours of the drowning, and they admitted being at the accident scene, Wickman said.

“They said there wasn’t any outward sign that there was an emergency,” so they made “no effort” to rescue the four, the district ranger said.

Wickman stressed that the two rangers “are not patrolmen, not search and rescue, not law enforcement. Both of these people work as wilderness firefighters. Their training and background is (in) the suppression of wildland fires.”

After spending at least an hour in the water, three of the men were rescued by Los Angeles County firefighters and volunteers at about 4:50 p.m. and hospitalized for hypothermia. But the fourth man, Robert Varrick, 24, of Lancaster, slipped from the canoe and drowned within a few yards of rescuers.

One rescuer, Kenneth Gray, an employee of American Adventures campground at the lake, dove in but was unable to locate Varrick, whose body was recovered by sheriff’s divers on Tuesday.

Survivors said the cold water--it was 42 degrees the next day--made it extremely difficult to swim.

Witness Cameron Caldwell and two survivors later described how they saw the green Forest Service truck and the two uniformed rangers on the shore.

The survivors said they shouted to the rangers that one in their group was an epileptic and another could not swim. Both of those men were among the survivors.

Caldwell, who was in his own truck at the time, said the rangers got into their truck and were laughing as they drove past. Caldwell said he thought the rangers would soon return with assistance. The Forest Service truck was equipped with a radio, but the rangers did not put in a call for assistance, Wickman said.

When no help arrived, Caldwell said, he went to a nearby county fire station.

The two rangers told Forest Service investigators that there were other witnesses on the beach, but none came up to report problems.

“They (the rangers) said they couldn’t hear too well what those individuals (the four men in the water) were saying,” Wickman said. “We’re trying to contact any and all witnesses.”

Gray said that when he arrived at the shore, he could plainly understand the cries for help. County fire officials estimated that the canoe was about 50 yards from shore.

The two rangers had been assigned to a landscaping and construction project at Pyramid Lake on Monday and were on their way back to the Saugus headquarters when they stopped by Elizabeth Lake, Wickman said. It is not clear what prompted them to stop there, he said.

Elizabeth Lake, 10 miles west of Palmdale, is part of the Angeles National Forest and within the jurisdiction of the Forest Service.