Climate of Change

The last images Nancy Rigg has of her fiance are of the back of his head as the Los Angeles River took him helplessly downstream.

Just for a second, the force of the rain-swollen, churning water turned him around and Rigg saw the frightened look on his face. Then he was gone.

It was Feb. 17, 1980. Rigg was standing on a footbridge over the river in Atwater. Earl Higgins, then 29, had gone into the water to try and save a boy who had jumped in after his bike.

“I can see the moment now,” Rigg said. “The child was like a beacon lighting the way to death’s door.

“I knew I would never see Earl again.”

Shortly after Higgins’ death, Rigg began what was, at first, a lonely crusade to persuade governmental agencies and officials that river rescues must be a priority in Los Angeles, a city better known for its sunshine and dry air.

Because of the efforts of Rigg and others who believed in the cause--and because a second tragedy that took the life of a teenage boy galvanized the rest of the city--there is now a Los Angeles County Multi-Agency Swift Water Rescue Task Force. This agency, made up of highly trained teams equipped with high-tech gear, including protection suits and Waverunners, has been rehearsing for weeks in preparation for the expected El Nino deluge.

*

It’s a far cry from when Rigg lost Higgins. In that era, firefighters arrived at river rescues wearing their usual heavy coats and boots.

“If they showed up at a structure fire wearing wetsuits and fins, they’d be laughed at,” Rigg said. “But when firefighters dressed in full turnout gear show up at a water rescue, they’re hailed as heroes for doing the best that they could.

“But that’s a lie, they weren’t doing the best they could.”

Rigg, who was a fledgling documentary filmmaker when she arrived in Southern California six weeks before Higgins drowned, dedicated her life to ensuring that no one again would be lost to the Los Angeles River without a fair fight.

“If Nancy and the public hadn’t stood up, things may not have gone as aggressively as they have,” said Jim Goldsworthy, a city firefighter who leads one of the swift water teams.

If the teams perform well during El Nino, Rigg said, she will retire as a water rescue activist. She can then pick up life where she left off, at age 29, on a footbridge spanning the Los Angeles River.

Rigg and Higgins had moved to Los Angeles from Colorado in a year when a heavy series of storms slammed Southern California.

Feb. 17 brought the first sun in days, prompting the couple to set out from their Atwater duplex for Griffith Park. About a block away, they came to the bridge that crossed the river, which had been little more than a dry gulch when they moved to the area.

Due to the rains, the gulch had become a torrent. The roar of the rushing water was so loud Rigg said she could barely hear Higgins talk.

Halfway across, they spotted two boys riding bicycles along the concrete banks. Rigg said she shouted at the boys to get away from the water.

“It almost seemed like they were taunting the water, but the water is mesmerizing,” she said.

*

It all happened so fast, Rigg said. Jimmy Ventrillo, 11, dipped the front wheel of his yellow bike into the river and the force of the water took it out from under him. The boy went in after it.

Higgins sprinted toward the end of the bridge, vaulted a chain-link fence and ran to the water’s edge, putting his hand out in an effort to catch the boy. Unable to reach Ventrillo, Higgins put his foot into the water and was swept into the current.

Rigg said she yelled at a bystander across the bridge to call 911. She expected experts in river rescue to soon be on the scene.

“It really was the myth of 911,” she said. “We are raised to believe you call 911 and experts will show up and save the day. There were no experts, [firefighters] showed up with no equipment or training to do anything useful.”

Ventrillo was saved because he got swept into an eddy that brought him to shore. Higgins traveled 30 miles and through 11 firefighting jurisdictions. His body was recovered nine months later in Long Beach Harbor.

Even before Higgins’ body was found, Rigg began writing to the Los Angeles City Council, the mayor and the county Board of Supervisors to push her new agenda. The only group to take her seriously, Rigg said, was county lifeguards.

“Lifeguards were one of the first groups to push” for river and flood rescue programs, said Lt. Mickey Gallagher of the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s lifeguard division. “Nothing was happening; we couldn’t get local government to bite off on it.”

Interest waned further when Los Angeles was hit with seven years of drought.

In 1992, the rains returned. In a tragedy that had eerie similarities to the incident that took Higgins’ life, Adam Bischoff, 15, of Woodland Hills was riding his bike along a flood channel when he was swept down the river.

Unlike Higgins’ drowning, much of the Bischoff tragedy was played out on television. Cameras caught the horror of the boy calling for help as police and fire officials failed in attempts to rescue him.

“I turned on the TV and saw the same firefighters in the same turnouts being as ineffective as they had been with Earl and dozens of other victims,” Rigg said. “I was so angry, I was shaking.”

In the wake of the emotional response to Bischoff’s death, the Los Angeles City Council and the county Board of Supervisors ordered an overhaul of swift water rescue responses.

The task force was formed, growing to the point where it includes a majority of fire departments in Los Angeles County, plus the county sheriff’s and public works departments.

*

The task force mapped the county’s 470-mile-long flood control channel system and chose numerous rescue locations. The city Fire Department installed a computer program that predicts where a victim might best be rescued, factoring in location and current speed.

Rigg strove to educate the public. Securing a grant from the Public Works Department, she produced an educational video, “No Way Out,” in 1993 that used television footage from Bischoff’s drowning to convince middle and high school students to stay away from the flood control channels.

A big ally in boosting public awareness has been the publicity surrounding El Nino.

“El Nino is a wake-up call,” she said. “This is the first time there has been such an emphasis put on flood preparation, and it’s a very exciting thing for me to watch and to participate in.”