North Texas volunteer firefighter dies battling California wildfires, officials say
A volunteer firefighter from North Texas who went to California to help in efforts to tame the state’s devastating wildfires died on the job Monday, according to the Cresson Volunteer Fire Department.
The woman, who wasn’t identified by the fire department, “lost her life on the fireground,” the department wrote in a Facebook post. KDFW identified her as Diana Jones, 63.
The firefighter was battling the August Complex, a large group of wildfires burning at Mendocino National Forest, the U.S. Forest Service said in a news release. The Forest Service said the incident was a vehicle accident involving three firefighters working the Tatham Fire, a 15,000-acre fire within the larger 243,000-acre August Complex, the Sacramento Bee reported. A second firefighter in the accident was injured with “burns to their hand and arm” and the third was uninjured, officials said.
The woman who died was part of a group of firefighters from the Cresson Volunteer Fire Department, about 25 miles southwest of Fort Worth, who went to California a few weeks ago as wildfires were raging across the state, according to the department. Nearly two dozen fires have popped up across California over the past several weeks, many of them caused by lightning and accelerated by dry, warm and windy conditions.
Two fires in the San Francisco Bay area have so far burned 750,000 acres, USA Today reported on Monday.
The Cresson firefighter had updated her Facebook profile picture on Monday to a picture of where she was working, according to the Cresson Volunteer Fire Department. It showed rows of hills extending in the distance, partially obscured by white smoke from the fires.
The department learned on Monday evening she had died, according to the Facebook post.
“Our department is numbed by the news and we are hurting,” the post read.
Tributes have flooded the comment section on the post, with people calling the woman a hero and extending their thoughts and prayers to her family. Some people said they were from California and were devastated by the news.
The Los Angeles Fire Department said in a comment its members send “their deepest condolences” to the Cresson department “in the loss of a devoted guardian who bravely and selflessly responded to protect others from the ravages of wildfire.”
A woman who said she’s a family member wrote, “She was a true hero and the absolute best person. She would drop what she was doing to help out.”
“We are shocked and saddened as members of her family,” the post read. “Please pray for her sons and grandkids.”
The death represents at least the eighth fatality linked to California’s huge wave of wildfires that sparked in mid-August as a set of heavy thunderstorms brought down thousands of lightning strikes, the Sacramento Bee reported.
This story was originally published September 1, 2020 at 10:26 AM.
