Boards Seeks Plan to Prevent Flood Deaths

In response to the deaths of three San Gabriel High School students in a rain-swept flood control channel last week, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to develop a plan to prevent accidents in the concrete-lined waterways.

The students were among five teenagers who climbed over a fence and down a rope ladder to the Alhambra Wash. That channel is maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers, not the county.

Under the motion sponsored by Supervisor Mike Antonovich, county officials will investigate similar incidents and present a plan for avoiding them.

Environmentalists contended Tuesday that the teenagers were swept away in part because the channel was recently cleared of foliage in order to move water more efficiently toward the ocean.

But that view is contested by officials, who say that in 1992, 15-year-old Adam Bischoff died in the Sepulveda Wash when he became entangled in the underwater branches of trees and bushes growing in the rushing stream.