Rescue Crews Keep Keen Eye on L.A. River

Gary Seidel stood on the concrete bank of the Los Angeles River and let the driving rain slap his face like a cold, wet insult.

As a veteran Los Angeles City Fire Department captain, Seidel knows all about water. But not the kind you dump onto a blazing building.

He knows about rain--the annoying, incessant drops that soon form puddles, then streams, rivers and, finally, the raging torrent of sheer water power that whisked along the riverbed right before his eyes, scaring him.

The former competitive swimmer was called to duty this week as part of the city’s new get-tough approach to dealing with storm waters and the human havoc they can cause: Seidel is part of a task force designed to keep people from drowning in flash floods.

He knows all too well how storm-angry rivers can kill, can wreak instant damage like almost no other force in nature. Toppling bridges. Tossing mobile homes like Tonka toys. Killing young boys without conscience.

Last February, 15-year-old Adam Bischoff was swept to his death in the storm-swollen Los Angeles River, not far from his Woodland Hills home--floating past dozens of would-be rescuers who threw ropes and dangled from bridges in futile attempts to save him.

A year later to the week, yet another winter storm buffeted Southern California and raised river levels like mercury in a thermometer. Seidel is patrolling local river banks as if he were a worried chaperon, trying to make dead sure the terrible scene of a drowning teen-ager would not be repeated.

Seidel is helping to coordinate the Los Angeles River Rescue Task Force, which consists of city and county fire departments, local lifeguard units and other agencies. While the city’s side of the program is new, county firefighters have for years operated urban search and rescue teams involving 340 trained men and women.

In light of Adam’s death, both agencies are teaming up to improve their rescue techniques and equipment.

Late this week, as rain fell on and off in blistering sheets, river rescue teams from both agencies fanned out across the 470 miles of waterways throughout Los Angeles County, performing helicopter, rope and rafting drills in the rushing, white-capped storm waters.

Several residents were lucky that the crews were there.

By late Friday afternoon, the county’s nine two-member teams had made 10 rescues, mostly people whose cars were swept away after they tried to cross rain-choked streams or rivers. The city rescue teams had only one call, which turned out to be an abandoned vehicle being tossed down the Los Angeles River.

The county rescues included a woman plucked from atop her car Thursday evening as it cascaded down a rain-swollen creek in Newhall. Indeed, it was an exhausting 36 hours for rescuers like Frank McCarthy, a county firefighter who snatched the woman while dangling from a ladder extended from a truck parked on the bank.

Early Friday, McCarthy helped rescue three men after their truck washed down a nearby creek. Water rescues, like pulling people from a burning building, are one of the firefighter’s greatest highs.

“You know you have to think clearly or end up dead along with your victim,” said the 35-year-old firefighter. “It gets you jacked up. And man, when that victim is finally safe and sound, it’s great, it’s Miller time.”

But raging waters also bring frustration. Recently, Adam’s parents filed a lawsuit against several local rescue agencies--alleging that officials had made no preparations to rescue those swept into the water.

And Seidel is disheartened because he too is the father of a teen-age son and daughter, and when he thinks of Adam’s tormented face bobbing just out of reach amid the fury of a heartless river, he thinks of his own son.

“We’re frustrated and we’re disappointed that we did not have the training that day to save that boy’s life,” he said. “Nobody likes to lose lives. A young boy drowns. A family is destroyed. A whole community loses.”

Yet another sore spot, he said, is that city officials had been talking about forming such a rescue task force just months before Adam’s death. After the drowning, City Councilwoman Joy Picus initiated a call from the panel to create the task force and get the city’s river rescue efforts fully prepared.

On Thursday and Friday, Seidel was part of four six-member river rescue teams--each consisting of four city firefighters and two lifeguards--that ran through the paces of snatching a struggling victim from the river.

Like Space-Age snorkelers, the rescuers wore colorful, lightweight wet suits, flak jackets and plastic helmets. They carried knives and mini strobe lights in case of any real rescues on the wet, miserable afternoons.

For hours, two teams stood along the Los Angeles River at Victory Boulevard in East Burbank, performing a rescue drill in which a life raft was guided into the muddy waters from lines thrown from a bridge and both sides of the water.

These were muscular men--expert swimmers, bodybuilders. Still, nobody has to tell them that even for the most physically fit a raging river can be deadly.

Last summer, a San Diego lifeguard was killed in Idaho while training for a river rescue team. Witnesses said the guard was treading water. And just like that, he was gone.

Both the city and county’s river rescuers have completed 50 to 200 hours of training on rivers in Northern California. They’ve seen the water’s raw power.

“Unlike an ocean, a moving river gives you no breaks between waves,” Seidel said. “Your only hope at a rescue is to use the bridges and the land on either side to effect a rescue, throwing bags, inflated fire hoses, anything for a victim to grab hold of.”

Seidel, a competitive swimmer and water volleyball player in college and high school, said that even the most powerful swimmer cannot fight the 1,600 pounds of pressure per square inch that a moving river generates.

“There’s no way a human can push himself off a rock in the middle of a river,” he said. “Look at what the river did to that motor home in Ventura last year. When the thing hit the bridge after being swept away, it literally exploded. All that was left were splinters.”

And even the sun--which showed its face briefly Friday--offered no solace. The respite of drier weather caused levels of the Los Angeles River to drop more than 10 feet, making it more dangerous, Seidel said.

He pointed to several newly exposed rocks that were submerged the previous day when the river’s water level was higher. “We call them strainers,” he said. “A victim or a rescuer can get trapped on one of those rocks and drown before anyone can reach them.”

On Thursday, as the rescue team went through its paces like doused river rats, scores of people looked on in wonderment from the Victory Boulevard bridge.

Mark Asher shuddered as he watched the river whisk by beneath him. “There but for the grace of God go I,” he said. “I know one thing, I’m staying away from that water.”

Nearby, Lou Cohen of Woodland Hills stood with his 14-year-old son, Brad--both transfixed by the awesome power and beauty of the rushing water. “I wanted to show my son just how powerful a river can be,” said Cohen, 46, an accountant. “Sure, it’s just water. But it’s deadly.”

Using sign language with his deaf son, Cohen made a no-nonsense message about rivers: “Son, you could get killed here just like that other boy did. Don’t play here.”

The boy looked away, down the river’s path until it formed a point on the cloudy horizon.

“I won’t,” he signed back to his dad. “I promise.”