Plan Drawn for Rescues From Flood Channels : Safety: Fire officials call for better training and outfitting of response vehicles with flotation devices. Recommendations follow drowning of youth in L.A. River in February.

Five months after a Woodland Hills teen-ager was swept to his death in the rain-swollen Los Angeles River, city fire officials Monday outlined a program to improve swift-water rescues through the use of better training and equipment.

Fire Chief Donald O. Manning will ask the Los Angeles City Council today for $225,000 to outfit firetrucks and police cars with flotation devices, to better train firefighters for water rescues and to establish procedures for deploying emergency crews during rainy weather.

Those recommendations are included in a report prepared by the Los Angeles River Rescue Task Force, formed after the Feb. 12 drowning of 15-year-old Adam Paul Bischoff pointed up deficiencies in the city’s techniques. Attempts to rescue Adam from the cold, churning water were frustrated by a lack of proper equipment and coordination.

Firefighters presently receive almost no training for swift-water rescues and do not routinely carry equipment such as flotation vests.

“We don’t want another Adam Bischoff drowning,” Manning said at a news conference to discuss the task force’s proposals.

Yet even if the recommendations are implemented, the report cautioned, rescues from the smooth concrete channels of the city’s flood control system are dangerous and rarely successful.

“No one should assume that these recommended changes will vastly improve the chances of being rescued,” the report warned.

But they are better than nothing, said Assistant Chief Tony Ennis, who headed the task force and coordinated efforts to rescue Adam as he was carried about 10 miles across the San Fernando Valley in murky currents that reached 28 m.p.h.

At those speeds, Ennis said, it was impossible for Adam to hold onto ropes tossed to him from bridges. The task force recommended providing fire companies and about 350 police cars with flotation vests and other equipment that can be tossed to someone in the river.

That type of gear is not issued, and during attempts to pluck Adam from the river, rescuers used whatever they could find. One police officer ventured to the water’s edge with a garden hose tied around his waist and held out an aluminum pole for the youth to grab.

In addition, fire officials will continue to investigate implementation of proposals for rescue devices suggested at a public hearing in April. Among the ideas were cables suspended below bridges and nets that could be spread across channels.

The report also calls for deploying four water rescue teams at various points along the river when the weather forecast predicts an inch or more of rain. Ennis said the four-person crews likely would be stationed in the Sepulveda Basin, Griffith Park, downtown and Long Beach.

Although the crews would not be part of helicopter units, they would be trained to work with air support in rescue attempts. Ennis said that depending too heavily on helicopter support is risky because the aircraft cannot always fly in poor weather.

He said the Fire Department will work with other public agencies in Los Angeles County to develop a system that uses the same techniques so that time is not wasted during rescues sorting out who does what.

Sites along the river should be identified as potential rescue spots and procedures should be in place to ensure that emergency crews can respond quickly, according to the report. Ennis said rescues are more often successful when crews are able to follow victims along the channel and pluck them out at predetermined spots.

No such spots existed during attempts to rescue Adam, whose body was found the next day pinned under dense brush on the river bottom near the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area.

Adam’s mother, Marilyn Bischoff, praised the report’s proposals.

“They are a start,” she said. “We don’t want another family to go through what we did.”