Turning the Tide

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 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 convince 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 12 years later 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 protective suits and jet-skis, 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, has since dedicated her life to ensuring that no one is again 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 had,” 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 and pick up life where she left off at age 29.

Rigg and Higgins had moved to Los Angeles from Colorado in a year when a heavy series of storms slammed Southern California. Some weather analysts now believe the bad weather of 1980 was due to an El Nino condition.

Feb. 17 brought the first sun in days, Rigg recalled. Suffering from cabin fever, the couple set out from their Atwater duplex for Griffith Park. About a block away, they came to the bridge that spanned the Los Angeles 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 rushing water was so loud that when they reached the bridge, 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 . . . it’s so powerful,” she said.

It all happened so fast, Rigg said. Eleven-year-old Jimmy Ventrillo 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 Jimmy, Higgins put his foot into the water.

Although he was 6 foot 3, and weighed 170 pounds, he was swept into the current.

Rigg said she yelled at a bystander across the bridge to call 911. She expected experts in river rescue would 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.”

Jimmy was saved because he got swept up 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 newfound 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. It was real frustrating.”

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 the Higgins drowning, much of Adam’s 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 Adam’s death, the Los Angeles City Council and the county Board of Supervisors ordered an overhaul to swift-water rescue responses.

The task force was formed, growing to the point where it now includes most 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, according to where he or she fell in and the speed of the current.

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 Adam’s drowning to persuade middle and high school students to stay away from the flood control channels.

One of her biggest allies 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.

“Floods are among the few disasters that are predictable and for that reason alone, we should maintain a steady state of preparedness.”

Preparation has been at the heart of Rigg’s message for 17 years. If all goes well when and if the heavy winter rains come, her battle will be over. Her life can go on.

Rigg never married--she said she couldn’t find anybody like Higgins. Her dreams of a family have been unfulfilled.

But there is comfort, she said, in knowing that she made a difference.

“We’ve proven change can come and be created,” Rigg said.