Inquiry Clears Two Forest Service Rangers in Canoeist’s Drowning

An official investigation into the drowning death of Robert Vavrick at Elizabeth Lake last month produced no evidence that two Forest Service employees who saw him in the water deliberately ignored pleas for assistance, Mike Wickman, district ranger of the Saugus District of the Angeles National Forest, said Monday.

Vavrick, 22, of Quartz Hill was one of four men thrown into the icy waters of the lake in the Angeles National Forest on March 2 when their canoe overturned. The others were rescued after more than an hour in the water and required hospital treatment for hypothermia. Vavrick’s body was found the following day.

After their rescue, two of the survivors, Melvin Sampson, 21, of Lancaster and Daniel Vail, 27, of Quartz Hill, said that as they clung to the overturned canoe, they saw two uniformed Forest Service employees, a man and a woman, on the shore 100 yards away and shouted to them repeatedly for help but that the rangers drove away without trying to aid them.

A witness to the incident, Cameron Caldwell, told The Times that he thought that the rangers were going for help as they drove away from the capsized men. But when they did not return, Caldwell went to a nearby county fire station and enlisted the help of a firefighter and a private campground employee with a rowboat, which they used to pull three of the men from the water. Vavrick had already disappeared beneath the surface.

The day after the incident, Wickman said that the rangers told him that they could not hear the boaters very well and did not realize that they needed help.

“They (the rangers) were very shocked” at the drowning, he said.

The rangers’ conduct was investigated by the inspector general’s office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which issued a statement Monday clearing them of wrongdoing.

“The testimony of Forest Service employees on the circumstances surrounding the incident, including the actions and testimony of bystanders, indicates that neither the employees nor others in the area were aware that Vavrick and his fellow canoeists were in a life-threatening situation,” Wickman said in the statement.

Will Continue in Jobs

“The bystander, who finally summoned rescuers, had watched Vavrick and others in the water prior to their arrival and after the departure of the Forest Service employees and summoned rescuers only after asking the canoeists if they really needed help,” the statement said.

In a telephone interview Monday, Wickman said investigators found that the two Forest Service employees--firefighters who were assigned to winter project work near the lake--”were not guilty of any wrongdoing and there will be no punishment.”

“Both of them are continuing their old jobs and have never, in fact, been away from work,” he said. “For some days after the incident, they were on administrative leave, but that was all.”

Employees Not Identified

Wickman said investigators spent a month looking into the incident and preparing their report, but he declined to give any further details, including the names of witnesses interviewed during the investigation.

Neither of the two Forest Service employees have been publicly identified, and, said Wickman, “they will not be identified.”