Man Being Swept Down Creek Is Plucked to Safety by Fire Department Helicopter : Rescue: Chopper from nearby Van Nuys airport lowers a man into 15-m.p.h. current to save him. ‘He doesn’t know how lucky he was,’ official says.

A Northridge man was safely plucked from a rain-swollen tributary in the San Fernando Valley on Thursday by Los Angeles firefighters who were quickly alerted to the emergency.

“He doesn’t know how lucky he was,” Battalion Chief John Mittendorf said of the 20-year-old. Mittendorf said firefighters feared that the incident could have turned into a tragic replay of the drowning of a Woodland Hills teen-ager last month.

Mittendorf’s helicopter rescue team pulled the man from Bull Creek, just south of Roscoe Boulevard in Van Nuys after he crashed on his bicycle and fell into the channel near Lassen Street and Gothic Avenue about 5 p.m.

The man, whose name was not released, suffered minor cuts and bruises as he was swept 2 1/2 miles in the 15 m.p.h. waters, but did not require hospitalization, firefighters said.

Mittendorf said an off-duty Los Angeles police officer spotted the man in the creek and called the Fire Department Air Operations Unit at nearby Van Nuys Airport.

Sgt. Jim Olmore said he was working in his back yard when he heard water rushing down the creek. When he walked over to take a look, he said, “I saw this kid in the water, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

“If I had looked over the wall 10 seconds earlier or later, I’m not sure I would have spotted him,” Olmore said.

Bull Creek runs through Van Nuys Airport and behind the Fire Department’s helicopter headquarters. Pilot Larry Harris had barely taken off when he lowered his craft toward the water as the man was swept under the bridge at Roscoe Boulevard.

After firefighter David Mudd was dropped from the chopper by a cable into the creek, he grabbed the victim and both were pulled safely to shore.

Heavy rain in northern Los Angeles County on Thursday raised the water level in Bull Creek, firefighters said.

Adam Paul Bischoff, 15, of Woodland Hills drowned in the Los Angeles River on Feb. 12 after struggling against swift currents in the channel brought on by heavy rain.