Town mourns firefighters killed in crash

updated 3:28 p.m. ET Aug. 8, 2008

MERLIN, Ore. - A southern Oregon community long involved in battling wildfires was plunged into mourning with word that seven of the nine people killed in a Northern California helicopter crash were employees of a local company that has mustered contract firefighting crews since 1979.

Grief-stricken Grayback Forestry crews were standing down and returning from fighting other fires for a break, a company official said. Family members who lost loved ones were even more devastated.

"You just can't describe how it feels," said Paul Steele, who lost his 19-year-old son, David, a varsity football player who used to ride along with local firefighters to get a closer look at the career he sought. "It empties the heart."

At the Rural/Metro Fire Department station serving Merlin, division chief Austin Prince stepped outside to straighten the flag, which had been lowered to half staff in commemoration of the deaths. He said the deaths had affected firefighters in this small community known for its sport fishing and whitewater rafting both "professionally and personally."

During a memorial service Thursday evening where at the Trinity Alps base camp where firefighters have been living between shifts on the fire lines, a bagpipe player performed "Taps" and a moment of silence was observed as a helicopter circled overhead.

John Bruno, a retired captain for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said that even though more than a hundred firefighters die every year in the line of duty, "it never gets easier any time it happens."

"When a firefighter dies, everyone knows him because we are all from the same cut," Bruno said.

Firefighters at Trinity Alps were given the option of being released from duty if they felt as if the crash would make it too difficult to keep working. None accepted, said Tim Fike, the deputy incident commander and a fire chief in Nevada County.

"It affected everybody emotionally, but everybody accepted the challenge and went back to what we do everyday," Fike said.

But Grayback Forestry's founder, Mike Wheelock, said many of his employees working other fires were returning home. "They are experiencing great grief about the missing and those who are injured," Wheelock said.

Investigators reach site
Meanwhile, a team from the National Transportation Safety Board got its first look late Thursday at the crash site where the Sikorsky S-61N chopper carrying 11 weary firefighters and two crew members went down in the remote Shasta-Trinity National Forest just after takeoff Tuesday.

Their arrival was significant because a sheriff's search team could not begin recovering bodies from the wreckage until the investigators made an initial assessment, according to the U.S. Forest Service. An NTSB spokeswoman said team members were expected to relay their initial findings on Friday, including whether they had found the aircraft's voice data recorder.

Six of the Grayback firefighters who died in the crash were identified as Shawn Blazer, 30; Scott Charleson, 25; Matthew Hammer, 23; Edrik Gomez, 19; Bryan Rich, 29; and Steele. All are from southern Oregon. Grayback said it would not release the name of a seventh victim until it could notify family members.

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