Grim Drama of Hope, Tragedy for Searchers

As the latest storm stalked off in a fury of lightning and thunder, dozens of volunteer and professional searchers headed out to muddy riverbanks, up frigid mountain peaks and out over an ocean stained brown by a week of weather the likes of which few Southern Californians could remember.

The drying skies gave way to the grim searches for bodies--searches that inevitably follow the cyclical disasters of nature. For searchers caught up in the heart-wrenching dramas and disappointments Thursday, it was part of a job whose frustrations and rewards are large.

“When you’re out there, all you do is concentrate on your job, try to put a body in a body bag,” said Ventura County Sheriff’s Lt. Arv Wells. “But when you have time to reflect, you wonder: Who was he? Where was he when it happened? And, I guess, could it have been me?”

In Ventura, where a flood wiped out a riverbed settlement known as Hobo Jungle and washed away trailers in a recreational vehicle park, sheriff’s helicopter crews came back empty-handed, happy for the moment to find only a blue plaid shirt that may have belonged to another of the storm’s victims. Because the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department had no confirmed reports of missing persons, further intensive searches were called off.

Thursday, raging waters had subsided to about 10 feet from the 50-foot-deep torrent that topped the Ventura Freeway on Wednesday. The flood claimed the life of a homeless man who lived in the normally dry bed of the Ventura River.

Wells, who was coordinating the search, had stood up to some ribbing when they had first been trained in “swift water rescue” three years ago. What swift water?

On Wednesday, however, he was out in the middle of a raging brown river that reminded him of spring flooding back in Elgin, Ill. It fell to him and a colleague to haul out of the river the body of a young man in shorts and tennis shoes.

“People think they can’t drown in Southern California,” Wells said. “But the power and force of the river is what gets them.”

Ventura pilot Dave Heald and diver Bob Naef, who helped pluck people from camper rooftops and islands in the muddy river on Wednesday, were back in the air Thursday morning, searching for bodies possibly swept out to sea. As they headed out over the coast in their helicopter, they were amazed to see a lone surfer sitting in the brown murk.

The two, who were part of a Ventura County Sheriff’s Department search and rescue team of 10 deputies and 29 volunteers, bantered about Wednesday’s work that saved 30 to 35 people, six dogs and a pair of Siamese cats.

As the helicopter hovered low, the intercom line within the cabin fell silent and all eyes searched the bushes and piles of debris for signs of life, or death.

“It’s difficult to tell because a body can be in a shape that just doesn’t look like a person,” Heald said. “They can be all folded up, or partly buried, maybe only an elbow is sticking out.”

After they spotted a garment that was believed to have been worn by the second homeless man, they hovered very near, combing the area with their eyes.

“That’s a blue plaid shirt, all right, but there’s no body,” Heald said.

The deputies recognized two men they had pulled out of the water the day before, amazed that they would return to the riverbed when another storm is expected in the next few days.

“But there probably isn’t a lot of available housing for them in Westlake,” Naef said, referring to the upscale community on the border of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

Some advocates for the homeless, including Evelyn Burge, Ventura County public health nurse, criticized authorities for not adequately warning residents of Hobo Jungle that the floodwaters were coming. She said she feared that residents were going to return to the riverbed without adequate warning of the storm expected this weekend.

Meanwhile, the Marine who died Wednesday when a helicopter was forced down in the ocean near Ventura was identified Thursday as Lance Cpl. Jeffrey B. Johns, 22, of Uniontown, Ohio.

Johns, an avionics technician, was assigned to Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 161 at Tustin, said Capt. Betsy Sweatt.

Eight other Marines were rescued from the ocean Wednesday morning by two search-and-rescue helicopters from the Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station.

The eight were found in a raft dropped to them by another Marine helicopter that had been flying with the downed aircraft, one of the rescue pilots said.

In Los Angeles, one of the most compelling stories of the storm was that of Adam Paul Bischoff, an affable athlete and excellent student from El Camino Real High School.

Haunted by the panicked face of young Adam Bischoff as he was swept away in roiling brown waters the day before, dozens of onlookers made a pilgrimage to the Los Angeles River bank Thursday, some simply unable to believe the young man was dead.

But there, on a sandy berm exposed as the storm receded, were the coroner’s investigators. Fifteen-year-old Bischoff, after passing dozens of potential rescuers who threw him ropes, garden hoses and inflatable rafts, was found 100 feet downstream from a railroad trestle where he was last spotted Wednesday morning.

Adam’s father, David, stood at the riverbank, looking at the spot where the teen-ager’s body had been recovered.

“I just want to thank rescue workers who tried to save my son,” Bischoff said. “Thank you very much.”

It was a death everyone could see coming and no one could seem to prevent.

Television cameras captured his fear as the 10th-grader struggled to stay above the turbulent muddy waters of the Los Angeles River while it coursed through Reseda Wednesday. On Thursday, the river had slowed, but trees bent to the ground testified to the force of the current the day before.

Los Angeles Police Lt. Don Kitchen said he had avoided assigning the same officers to search for the body who had just one day before tried to save Adam’s life.

“I felt they had been through enough as it was,” he said.

But Joel Price, a veteran Los Angeles homicide detective, came back. He said he had tried to help the boy by tying a garden hose around an officer who waded into the river and extended a pole from a passing pool man’s truck. But, in trying and failing to reach the pole, Adam let go of a log he was using to keep him afloat.

“I don’t think there’s ever been anything that’s bothered me as much as this,” said Price, as he stood near the banks of the river where Adam’s body was found. “I saw it happen. I feel as though there should have been something else I could have done.”

On Mt. Baldy, the search for two missing Orange County skiers entered its second frustrating day.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Laurie Becklund and Aaron Curtiss from Los Angeles and Ashley Dunn from Mt. Baldy.