Getting Ready for the Rains

When brush fire season ends and there’s no more need for Los Angeles Fire Department helicopter pilot Rick Wheeler to douse hot spots from the air, the 19-year veteran says his job gets a little slow.

So this winter he hopes to get into the swim of things as a member of the department’s Swift Water Team, which tries to pluck people out of the Los Angeles River when it flows fast and treacherous after winter rains.

And if this winter’s El Nino-induced storms turn out to be half as heavy as meteorologists predict, the rescue team is going to be one busy group.

Twelve members of the Fire Department, from firefighters to fire captains, tried out for the elite 48-member unit on Monday and Tuesday in the churning waters of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Although there are no immediate openings, there may be some later in the season as members are injured or take other assignments, officials said.

“I thought it might be busy this year so I thought it would be a good time to try out,” said Wheeler, 40. “It’s something I’ve always been interested in.”

The exam tests swimming skills from basic strokes to defensive positions. Firefighters have to demonstrate how they would rescue a victim who is combative, panicked and flailing in the water, played by a member of the rescue squad.

They must swim into and out of an eddy and negotiate a “strainer”--which in real life is usually a fallen tree, chain-link fence or other debris in the river channel. During the test, it was two pieces of pipe fastened with rope to a bridge over the aqueduct.

On Monday, as the mercury soared into the high 90s, firefighters donned wetsuits, life jackets and helmets.

Capt. Charles Clark dove in and swam ferociously toward the eddy, almost appearing to get sucked under at one point. He backstroked from one side of the aqueduct to the other, breathing hard from the effort.

The swift water can create hundreds of pounds of pressure on a swimmer’s legs, and if he does not adopt a defensive position--swimming with his legs on the surface--a victim’s legs can easily become tangled in submerged debris, pulling him under.

The concrete-lined aqueduct is supposed to simulate the concrete-lined Los Angeles River. But the river’s murky water sometimes flows at 35 mph compared to the aqueduct’s estimated 10 mph and can contain junk such as shopping carts, fallen trees and motor oil.

The Swift Water Team was formed in 1992 after 15-year-old Adam Bischoff was swept away in the river’s fast-moving waters. Dozens of firefighters, police officers and motorists threw ropes and flotation devices to him, but the Woodland Hills boy could not grab them.

Authorities said they believe he was killed by a piece of debris in the water before they could rescue him.

His videotaped death struggle, shown on TV news shows, set off a public outcry over the dangers of the river in the rainy season.

Dennis Roach, a 35-year-old firefighter trying out for the water rescue team this week, said Adam’s death “moved me just as much as everyone else.” He added that the boy’s death makes him think of losing his own twin sons, who are 2 1/2.

“I wouldn’t want that to happen to them or any other child or adult,” he said.

Authorities say a lot has changed since 1992. Tryouts are held every year for the rescue team, which trains an average of eight hours a month.

The team members are usually scattered about the city on other assignments, with the head of the team based at a riverside station in Sherman Oaks. In times of heavy rain, the team, made up of Los Angeles and Culver City firefighters and county lifeguards, can deploy into four separate groups spread out from from the river’s headwaters in the Valley to where it empties into Los Angeles Harbor, said Dan Arnold, a fire engineer and a coordinator of the Swift Water Team.

There is also new equipment available, including specialized suits to protect rescue members from debris and pollution and Yamaha WaveRunners with rescue baskets on the back. Fire engines now carry flotation devices to deploy if they arrive on scene first, said Capt. Jack Wise, also a coordinator for the Swift Water Team.

“Our ability to rescue has increased tremendously,” Wise said, but he added that the task is still not easy, because the current moves so fast that if rescuers miss a victim at a given site, they cannot possibly get ahead of the person to try again.

“It’s a one-shot thing--you can’t just pick up your stuff and move it,” he said.

River rescues call for a whole new set of skills for firefighters, Clark said.

“Fires are a lot more predictable,” he said. “You know exactly what is going to happen five minutes from now, 10 minutes from now. Rivers are so dynamic. The situation changes because the victim is in a different place.”