WHEN THE RAINS CAME ONE TRAGEDY TOO MANY FINALLY MOTIVATED L.A. TO HONE FLOOD RESCUES.

Byline: Nancy J. Rigg

ADAM Bischoff was 15-years old. Earl Higgins was 29. Joel Burchfield was 11. Gail Ortega was 18. Cary Dean Burlew was 11. Jose Romero was 39. Robert Diaz Jr. was 2 years old. Thirty-nine-year-old Young Woo Kang was visiting Los Angeles from Korea. CHP Officers Britt Irvine and Rick Stovall were doing what they always did, serving the public, trying to help motorists in trouble.

John Henderson, 33, was a single father on a hike with his 9-year old son, Matthew. And Griselda Gallo, 14, Dulce Castruita, 14, and her brother Raul Nahle, 17, were high school friends who clung to one another, arm in arm, during their last few moments on earth.

All perished in swirling, churning floodwaters in Southern California.

On Feb. 17, 1980, my fiance, Earl Higgins, and I witnessed two young boys riding their bicycles perilously close to the edge of the flood-swollen Los Angeles River.

One boy fell into the deluge and cried out for help. Instinctively Earl made a heroic attempt to rescue him. The stark image of man and boy being swept downstream at about 35 miles per hour is something that will haunt me always. Earl's remains were not recovered until an agonizing nine months later.

How did the boy manage to survive when Earl did not? Where along the 30-mile stretch of river from Griffith Park to Long Beach did Earl succumb to the relentless power of the torrent?

And why, why weren't rescuers able to save him?

Even as I struggled to rebuild my life in the aftermath of a flood disaster that killed more than 30 people in Los Angeles and caused millions of dollars worth of property damage, nothing seemed to quell these questions, which smoldered in the deepest part of my soul, springing to full fury every time there were news reports of someone else succumbing to relentless floodwaters.

In the early 1980s, when we endured several successive years of flooding, I counted the dead, wincing when the numbers climbed to more than a dozen one year and 16-18 the next. With only a few exceptions, everyone who was swept away perished. It seemed that there were no happy endings.

The concerns I expressed to politicians fell on deaf ears and eventually dried up when a lengthy drought set in.

But in February 1992, the rains did come again. A series of powerful storms pummeled the Southland, wreaking havoc from Ventura County to San Diego and killing nearly a dozen people.

The death of one young man was especially painful, coming as it did just a few days before the 12th anniversary of Earl's death.

Fifteen-year-old Adam Bischoff, who had grown up during the blistering drought of the late 1980s, did not recognize the danger when floodwaters filled an arroyo near his home. The surge was mesmerizing, and like other children before him, Adam was drawn to it.

And like other children before him, somehow Adam slipped into the torrent and was helplessly swept for miles downstream past rescuers who had neither the training nor equipment needed to perform a safe and effective swiftwater rescue.

Adam drowned on Feb. 12 and his remains were recovered the next morning when the floodwaters finally receded.

His death mobilized our community in a way that no previous tragedy had.

Political leaders, who finally emerged from the fog of their risk- management denial with pained and bewildered looks on their faces, suddenly wanted to know why local emergency responders were so ill-prepared to handle inland water rescues.

Although a handful of visionary water rescue specialists, including county lifeguards, city and county firefighters, and rescue paramedics from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, had been quietly working for years to improve swiftwater rescue capabilities within their own agencies, it was only when the Los Angeles City Council and county Board of Supervisors got behind them that efforts to standardize and coordinate swiftwater rescue training, fund the purchase of much-needed equipment, and develop a proper flood safety education program were realized.

Flooding is the leading cause of weather-related death not just nationwide, but worldwide. On average, 20,000 to 30,000 victims perish in floods, with an estimated 300 to 500 deaths annually in the United States.

Because no federal agency has consistently tracked death statistics in floods and incidents involving swiftwater, and since criteria state-to- state for judging what constitutes a flood-related death are haphazard at best, these numbers are the result of my own determination to track the statistics.

One undeniable factor in the high death rate worldwide is the general lack of swiftwater rescue training and equipment for rescue personnel, who too often struggle, on the spur of the moment, to do the best they can, with tragic results.

In 1992 no one realized what a landmark our swiftwater rescue revolution in Los Angeles would represent.

Over the past decade, Los Angeles has developed the most comprehensive multiagency, multijurisdictional swiftwater rescue and flood safety education program in the world.

Under the leadership of the Los Angeles Multi-Agency Swiftwater Rescue Committee, with representatives from 18 fire rescue, law enforcement and other government agencies serving on it, more than 7,500 local fire rescue, law enforcement and lifeguard personnel have received swiftwater rescue training.

Several hundred swiftwater rescuers who have advanced training serve on more than a dozen ground-based and helicopter swiftwater rescue teams that are pre-deployed to key locations throughout the county during times of high flooding risk.

We average more than 100 swiftwater rescue calls per year when the rains come.

Even with the widespread use of the flood safety education video, ``No Way Out,'' which features the cautionary tale of Adam Bischoff's death, children still manage to get swept away, and motorists, who are unwary of the dangers posed by flooded streets and low water crossings, end up getting stranded in quickly rising floodwaters.

But thanks to the dedication of swiftwater rescuers throughout Los Angeles County, there are now more happy endings than sad ones.

Christopher Wieting was 4. Robert Johnson was 8. Edward Wieting was 27. All three were swept down the Pacoima Wash in March 1995. Jason Bastain was 7. When he fell into the wash in April 1995, LAPD Officer Mike Grasso and an unidentified 20-year attempted to rescue him. The force of the floodwaters immediately overwhelmed them all. Seventeen people were swept down the Pacoima Wash that spring.

In January 1997, Mark Zarbis and Jose Nunez took a wild ride on a 45,000-pound, fully loaded cement truck that was hurtled down the Los Angeles River like a child's toy.

During the 1997-98 winter storm season, when El Nino conditions spawned torrential downpours, on one particularly rainy night in January, there were 32 calls for swiftwater rescue in Santa Clarita alone.

In March 1998, 13-year old Megan Cole tried to grab her 14-year old friend, Jennifer Simpson, when Jennifer fell into Bull Creek. Both girls helplessly traveled more than five miles downstream. On April 17, 2000, 14-year old Abel Flores and 15-year old Daniel Rivera were swept down Little Dalton Wash toward certain death.

But unlike Adam Bischoff, Earl Higgins and countless earlier victims, all were rescued by local swiftwater rescue teams.

Although there continue to be occasional fatalities during when floodwaters rise, in recent years, not a single death has been compounded by the lack of swiftwater rescue training and equipment.

Thanks to our pioneering swiftwater rescue program, victims who find themselves at the mercy of powerful floodwaters now have a fighting chance to survive.

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