Do Rescue Teams Need Rescuing?

On a cloudy Saturday a year ago, Jeff Thornton rode his snowboard off a ski slope in the San Gabriel Mountains and disappeared into a steep, icy chasm called Bear Gulch.

For six days, the 14-year-old hunkered down and waited for help, his toes bare and shriveled after he lost a boot. He hummed songs and counted numbers to pass time, alone and scared in the freezing wind.

Rescuers routinely find lost skiers and snowboarders in the gulch, for it sits like a giant pine-clad funnel on the backside of the New Mountain High ski resort.

But interviews and documents show that key decisions by rescue leaders may have extended Thornton’s exposure. Critics say those decisions reflect growing incompetence in county search and rescue teams, fraying what has long been a safety net for those lost or stranded in the mountains.

Within two days of Thornton’s disappearance, the search was effectively called off because Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials leading the rescue presumed the boy was dead. Fearing blizzards and avalanches, they did not want to risk lives to find a body.

Rescuers did not search the main part of Bear Gulch again until Friday, when they found Thornton conscious, less than a mile from the chairlift.

The boy’s survival made national news. But the penetrating chill had taken its toll. His feet and hands, blackened by frostbite, were so infected that he died a week later during an operation.

In the year since, two reserve officers have lodged formal complaints about the Sheriff’s Department’s management of its search and rescue teams, citing Thornton’s death as an example. Others in interviews back the claims.

The tragedy points to a long-simmering dispute over whether the rescue squads should be focused on mountaineering or law enforcement. A central complaint is that team members and leaders with police backgrounds but little mountaineering experience are making crucial rescue decisions. They say inexperience among sheriff’s administrators and the sheriff’s reserves who make up the vast bulk of the teams is putting rescuers and victims in danger.

Department officials are probing the allegations but defend the teams and the Thornton rescue. The decision to scale back that effort, they say, was made by experts after agonizing debate. It is easy to criticize with 20/20 hindsight, they say.

“All I know is they do an outstanding job and have a great record,” said sheriff’s Sgt. Bill McMillan, the administrator in charge of the rescue teams. “I just don’t see safety problems.”

The county’s eight search and rescue teams, like others around the nation, consist of volunteers who help retrieve lost hikers and skiers. In 1997, they went on 307 missions and rescued 330 people.

Unlike members of teams elsewhere, most L.A. County volunteers must first become reserve sheriff’s deputies, which requires 16 weeks at the academy and regular shooting practice.

Some team members say increasing numbers of volunteers with police training but few wilderness skills are replacing veteran mountaineers. As a result, they say, teams are having trouble performing even basic rescues.

‘All We Did Was Screw It Up’

Although the county has issued a set of rescue standards that the teams must meet, it does not give periodic tests for mountaineering, technical rescue ability or physical fitness. Nor does it have a policy of conducting outside reviews of team rescues.

Critics say the hundreds of patrol hours and the strict background checks required to become reserve deputies often weed out skilled mountaineers uninterested in law enforcement.

Sheriff’s officials say the police training is crucial for work in Angeles National Forest, where crime is a growing problem. Critics counter that the training rarely, if ever, proves necessary.

The issue involves all of the county’s teams except the Sierra Madre unit, which survives largely on private donations and is allowed to fill its ranks with civilian volunteers.

The dispute has become most bitter in regard to the San Dimas Search and Rescue Team, whose members Brian Gunnarson and Mark Schlueter registered the complaints that have prompted the department’s investigation.

The two men have participated in scores of team rescues over the last two years. They have passed the county’s basic safety test, which authorized them to take part in rescues, and have trained other reserves. But they refused to take an advanced test to complete membership requirements because they said they did not want to be liable for team mistakes.

Gunnarson charged that the team’s lack of skill in maneuvering amid snow and ice gravely hindered the Thornton search on the crucial first night.

“The only miracle was that kid got out of the mountains and survived as long as he did,” Gunnarson said. “All we did was screw it up.”

The rescue effort, which began Saturday, Feb. 7, fell to the sheriff’s Antelope Valley Search and Rescue Team. The San Dimas team was recruited to help.

After nightfall, in driving snow, 12 members took the New Mountain High resort chairlift up and began snowshoeing along Thornton’s tracks into Bear Gulch. Down 400 feet, with wind gusting up to 70 mph, the group came to a rock outcropping, where the field leader told everyone to put on crampons, an obvious error, Gunnarson said.

“I said, ‘No, there’s no ice. You don’t use crampons in snow.’ The snow will ball up and you’ll be walking on platform shoes,” he said. “Then I’m like, ‘Where are your goggles?’ He didn’t bring them. He couldn’t even open his eyes.”

The leader and others stayed behind while Gunnarson continued with an Antelope Valley rescuer. The two had a stove, “bivvy sack” sleeping bags and food and were prepared to stay several days. But they were called back by leaders stationed at the resort.

“There was nothing technical for us to prevent us from going down,” Gunnarson said. “And I’ve got two kids and a lovely wife. I’m not going to risk my life to save somebody.”

The reserve coordinator for the San Dimas team, Sgt. Dave Rash, said the conditions were too dangerous. “What are the chances [Thornton] had already died?” he asked. “Should I risk killing rescuers?”

The next day, leaders did not send search teams out after the Southern California Nordic Ski Patrol and the U.S. Forest Service determined there was an avalanche danger in upper Bear Gulch.

“If there’s an avalanche danger, we’re not going in there,” said Les White, Antelope Valley team captain.

John Moynier, an accredited avalanche consultant who provides forecasts for rescue teams in the eastern Sierra Nevada and who has studied the topography of Bear Gulch, said the Sheriff’s Department could have continued its search.

“There appeared to be a number of options to safely descend into that area,” he said.

Moynier, who this winter at The Times’ request analyzed local topography maps, photographs and weather data regarding the rescue, said calling off the ground search was an extraordinary precaution.

“If the search and rescue teams were really taking on the responsibility that they assume when they put on that hat and badge and drive around in the truck, they would have found [Thornton] sooner,” he said.

Indeed, some sheriff’s rescuers on the scene thought they could have climbed down numerous ridges without crossing the open slopes where avalanches occur.

‘In My Heart, I Felt They Gave Up’

The next day, Sheriff’s Department leaders--advised by rescue team captains--again did not send search teams into Bear Gulch, citing the previous day’s avalanche assessments. But those only applied to Sunday. No new assessments were performed Monday, although experts say avalanche conditions can disappear in a day.

Monday afternoon, deputies were dropped by helicopter into the canyon. By mistake, they were put below their intended destination.

With a storm arriving Monday evening, the full-scale search effort was postponed until Saturday. “As far as we were concerned, we had a body to find,” White said.

Sheriff’s rescue leaders say it is a miracle that Thornton, a husky football player from the California desert town of Brawley, survived even one night.

But Rocky Henderson, vice president of the Mountain Rescue Assn. and a leader of the Portland (Ore.) Mountain Rescue team, said lost skiers often survive several days in the coldest weather.

“We had a kid who recently survived three nights on Mt. Hood, and he didn’t even have frostbitten toes,” Henderson said.

Though not a trace of snow fell Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, helicopters made only periodic searches of the forested canyon. There were no ground crews, White said, because there were “no tracks or signs that Thornton was alive.”

Experienced rescuers say searching by helicopter is notoriously ineffective, largely because tracks are impossible to spot through the trees. When they did find Thornton, rescuers on the ground followed tracks that were at least a day old and clearly missed by the aircraft.

Lori Thornton, who spent days at her son’s bedside, said he wandered the canyon, trying to wave down the helicopters. “In my heart,” she said, “I felt they gave up.”

A week after his rescue, bedridden with frostbite, dehydration and gangrene, Jeff Thornton developed complications and died during surgery when a tube punctured his heart. The coroner said the risky operation was a last-ditch effort to save him. Lori Thornton has sued the hospital.

She praises the Sierra Madre team, which found her son, but is frustrated with the rest of the Sheriff’s Department. The day after Jeff disappeared, a deputy told her the boy’s remains would be found in several months when the snow melted, she said, adding, “I was going crazy.”

Avalanche consultant Moynier, who does work for the Mono County sheriff, said the decisions during the Thornton rescue appeared to be based more on “institutional protocol” than experience.

“The bottom line is they thought he was dead and decided not to put rescuers at risk,” he said. “Then to find him and have him die from exposure--that’s a particularly embarrassing situation.”

Schlueter also alleged in his complaint that several team members nearly botched the rescue of two men stranded during a heavy rain last February on a washed-out road along the San Gabriel River.

With a dam upstream threatening to overflow, the team left the scene, he said. Members returned later and tried to set up a rope system that the victims could use to cross the river to safety, he said. While the rescuers fumbled, a deputy and a team member had to radio a more experienced rescuer named Greg Christmas, Schlueter said. Numerous witnesses corroborated his version.

Finally, less than an hour before a wall of water would barrel down the canyon, Christmas, a former trainer for the team, arrived and directed rescuers to tear down their ropes and set up a new system. Within 20 minutes, members said, they retrieved the victims.

Sgt. Rash, the team’s reserve coordinator, disputed that account and said the team had been performing its rescue correctly.

He acknowledged that Gunnarson and Schlueter are “mountain climbing experts.” Rash asked Gunnarson to be on the team’s training staff because of that expertise. But the sergeant said the pair’s safety complaints are “opinions” resulting from personality conflicts.

Rash denied any safety problems and said the current San Dimas leaders are capable. “I defy anyone to show me where we injured a victim in the last 42 years,” he said. “We never had a lawsuit filed against the San Dimas Mountain Rescue Team by a victim.”

‘We Have Fought . . . Not to Be Deputies’

The Sheriff’s Department has had jurisdiction over all volunteer search and rescue teams in the county since the 1950s. Although there are some temporary civilian slots on all the county teams, only the Sierra Madre squad does not recruit reserve deputies.

“We have fought very hard not to be deputies,” said Tom Burhenn, president of the Sierra Madre team. “We recruit people whose main interest is not law enforcement, but mountaineering.”

San Bernardino County sheriff’s officials say their teams’ quality improved sharply when they stopped requiring members to be reserve deputies in 1980. Now 10% of the members are reserves and can deal with the few law enforcement missions that require rescue teams, said Deputy John Plasencia.

“We had guys who used to show up for search and rescues with handcuffs, a service revolver and a backup gun,” he said.

Gunnarson and Schlueter, who have trained federal agents as climbers, were put on indefinite leave in September after complaining to a sheriff’s ombudsman.

Gunnarson said he regrets not ignoring his leader’s orders and continuing into Bear Gulch that Saturday night. The Sierra Madre team, which found Thornton, acted on its own initiative, with support from a sheriff’s helicopter crew.

On that Wednesday, without notifying the Antelope Valley reserve coordinator, a Sierra Madre team member dug snow pits and determined that the gulch was safe to enter. They waited for cloudy weather to clear, and nine members climbed down the gulch Friday. Within six hours, they found Thornton, drinking water from a creek.

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Lost and Found

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department oversees the county’s eight search and rescue teams. The teams provide the last safety line for people who are lost or stranded in the mountains. Here is a breakdown of the teams’ missions in 1997, the most recent year for which figures are available:

Number of missions: 307

People searched for: 384

Rescued: 330

Bodies found: 25

Missing/unknown: 29

More than 100 of the missions by the search and rescue teams in 1997 involved hikers and backpackers. Others involved cyclists, climbers, swimmers, boaters, water-skiers, snow sports participants, hunters, anglers and campers.

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Source: Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department