ART Magzine

Advanced Rescue Technology Magazine
August/September 2003
Vol. 6, No. 4

'A Successful Mission'

For the past 23 years, Los Angeles-based freelance author and frequent ART Magazine contributor Nancy Rigg has campaigned tirelessly to get adequate water rescue training, equipment and standards in place across the United States so that rescue personnel can stay safe while saving lives.

Her mission began following a personal tragedy. In 1980, her fiancé, Earl Higgins, drowned after jumping into a flood-swollen Los Angeles River to rescue a 12-year-old boy who had fallen into the raging waters. While the boy survived, Earl lost his life at the age of 29. The fact that Earl died during a major flood that claimed another 25 lives led Nancy to start asking questions regarding the capacity of local emergency services to respond to such events. It would take 12 years of questions before Los Angeles established a comprehensive multi-agency swiftwater/flood rescue program.

Nancy, who advocates the development of a federally sponsored network of flood rescue teams, was honored at the Higgins and Langley Memorial Awards in Flood and Swiftwater Rescue during NASAR's SAR conference in Reno, NV, in late May. The awards were created in 1993 by members of NASAR's Swiftwater Rescue Committee in honor of Earl Higgins and Jeffrey Langley, a firefighter/paramedic with the Los Angeles County Fire Department who lost his life in a helicopter incident in 1993, and who had worked with Nancy to develop a multiagency swiftwater flood rescue program in Los Angeles County before his death. Not only was Nancy surprised with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Higgins and Langley Committee, but she also received the SVC Distinguished Service Medal, only the second ever presented, for her efforts to improve the safety of swiftwater rescue.

At the awards ceremony, plans to organize the first annual Rigg International Swiftwater Challenge were announced. Proceeds from this premier event will help defray medical costs incurred by Nancy during a recent prolonged illness, with funds from the event in future years supporting the Higgins and Langley Awards. For more information on the Challenge, turn to page 16.

On behalf of the ART staff, I would like to congratulate Nancy on a job well done!

—Nancy Perry, Managing Editor

Nancy Rigg's testimony before a Congressional Hearing.