L.A. RIVER : Council Urged to Adopt Rescue Plan

His voice breaking with emotion, the father of a Woodland Hills teen-ager who drowned last winter in the rain-swollen Los Angeles River urged the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday to adopt a $225,000 plan to improve the Fire Department’s ability to rescue people from the river.

The plan was drafted after the Feb. 12 drowning of Adam Bischoff, 15. David Bischoff, the youth’s father, warned lawmakers Tuesday that “the rains will return--don’t let another six months go by without action.”

After a briefing, the council referred the plan to its budget committee for hearings on how to fund its implementation. Currently there is no money for the plan.

Councilwoman Joy Picus, who got public safety officials to study ways to improve river rescue efforts after the Bischoff drowning, called the estimated $225,000 price tag for the plan “a very modest sum,” even under current budget restraints.

“The loss of life is not an acceptable risk,” Picus said.

Also urging council approval was Nancy Rigg, a Fairfax neighborhood resident and free-lance writer, whose fiance, Earl Higgins, drowned in 1980 in the Los Angeles River while trying to rescue a boy from its waters.

“The Bischoff family and I have experienced the tragic outcome of an inadequate emergency rescue response,” Rigg told the lawmakers as she urged them to adopt the plan recommended by the Los Angeles River Rescue System Task Force.

The plan calls for the city Fire Department to train 24 firefighters in the special techniques of swift-water rescues; equipping 350 Police Department patrol cars with flotation devices; and establishing a pact that enables the city to call on the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for help in river rescues.