TWISP — Like thousands of other college students in the West, Tom Zbyszewski relished summers on the fire lines — it was outdoor work that paid, that was important, that gave him a little swagger when he returned to school in the fall. His parents, who had fought wildfires themselves, weren’t even nervous about it.
One more week, and Zbyszewski, a 20-year-old physics major with an acting bent, would have been back at Whitman College, telling stories.
Instead, flames driven by shifting winds overtook his crew after they crashed a vehicle Wednesday while fighting a wildfire in Washington. Zbyszewski and two others were killed and four were injured, one critically.
“It’s what everybody does up here. It’s part of the culture,” his sobbing father, Richard, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Thursday night. “I fought fires for years and years and years — I never even got burned. I wish it was me. I’m an old man.”
More details emerged on Friday about the incident. Okanogan County Sheriff Frank Rogers said a group of firefighters tried to escape the flames in two vehicles and on foot.
One vehicle made it out of danger Wednesday, but the other vehicle crashed and was overrun by flames. That’s the vehicle in which the three firefighters died. Rogers said the four firefighters who were injured, one critically, were among those who had to escape on foot.
Rogers said it is not clear when the county coroner will release the cause of death of the three firefighters.
The tragedy brought to 13 the number of firefighters killed across the West this year during one of the driest and most explosive wildfire seasons on record. At least 10 fires were burning in north-central Washington’s Okanogan County alone, where entire towns have emptied as residents headed for safety.
The fallen firefighters worked for the U.S. Forest Service, which identified the other victims as Richard Wheeler, 31, Andrew Zajac, 26.
Wheeler had moved to Wenatchee with his wife, Celeste, only about a year ago to work as a summer firefighter for the Forest Service after earning a degree in Natural Resources Management at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. He was raised in South Haven, Michigan, according to the Wenatchee World.
Zajac, of Downers Grove, Illinois, and most recently of Winthrop, completed a 4.5-month north-to-south hike of the Pacific Crest Trail in 2013, the World reported. He received a degree in biology from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland in 2010 and a master’s of science degree from the University of South Dakota in 2014, according to his LinkedIn page. Zajac was a two-year starter at right tackle for Case Western’s football team.
All three were from specialized crews that go into dangerous areas as fast as they can to examine a scene and report back to commanders on what needs to be done, said Bill Queen, a firefighting spokesman.
The most badly hurt among the survivors was Daniel Lyon, 25, a reserve police officer in Milton, who suffered burns over 60 percent of his body and was in critical condition at a Seattle hospital.
Lyon’s mother, Barbara, said her son loves the camaraderie of police officers and firefighters. This was his first summer on the fire lines.
“He would call me every day and always tell me not to worry, things are fine,” she said a news conference at the hospital. “And I would say, ‘Daniel, I pray for you every night, for all your safety, for you and the others.”’
Fire investigators with notebooks and cameras on Thursday walked the hills near Woods Canyon Road outside Twisp, a recreation center in the scenic Methow Valley 115 miles northeast of Seattle.
The victims’ bodies were removed that afternoon, each man taken out in an individual ambulance, escorted by more than a dozen fire and police vehicles with lights flashing. Firefighters along the route held their hands and helmets over their hearts.
The bodies had been left where they fell Wednesday so investigators could take photographs and map out the scene, Twisp Police Chief Paul Budrow said. An investigation was expected to take many weeks.
The deaths underscored the danger of this fire season. Nearly 29,000 firefighters are battling some 100 large blazes across the drought- and heat-stricken West, including in Idaho, Oregon, Montana and California.
The 13 firefighters killed so far this season is a relatively high number, according to Jessica Gardetto of the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. There were 10 fatalities last year and 15 in 2012, but 34 in 2013, which included 19 members of an elite firefighting crew killed by an out-of-control wildfire near the small town of Yarnell, Arizona.
A large portion of the state’s firefighters are college students, and many come back for years, becoming leaders on fire crews, because they like the work, said Joe Smillie, a spokesman for Washington’s Department of Natural Resources. The wages are often about $12 to $18 an hour, and with long days, the pay can add up, he said.
“It’s a lot of people who love the place, who love protecting it, and it’s a great way to spend the summer,” Smillie said. “It gets passed down almost as a summer tradition in a lot of families. Around the camps, you see a lot of children and grandchildren of some of our older firefighters.”
That was the case for Zbyszewski, an only child who was spending his second summer in the fire camps. His father spent about 20 years as a seasonal firefighter with the Forest Service, and his mother, Jennifer, fought fires and still works for the agency, overseeing trails, campgrounds and recreation programs in Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, Richard Zbyszewski said.
“That’s the whole story: He wanted some money for college, and he liked the job,” the father said. “It’s just a terrible thing.”
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