Death strikes home in biggest of blazes
Comrades recall fallen firefighter from Utah
UKIAH, Mendocino County — In the predawn hush, Sean Kavanaugh climbed the three steps to the stage to lead the Tuesday morning operational briefing.
Only three steps, but some days, they felt like so many more. Repeatedly, the incident commander had faced the temporary town of firefighters assigned to the massive pair of blazes known as the Mendocino Complex to announce the death of a colleague on the fire lines somewhere in California.
He always asked for a moment of silence, and those assembled shed their baseball caps and bowed their heads. But this time was different — this time it was someone fighting the same fire.
On Monday night, Matthew Burchett, a battalion chief from Draper, Utah, died on a fire line near Lake Pillsbury as the bigger of the two fires that ignited July 27, the Ranch Fire, pushed northwest through Lake County. Officials did not release details on what happened, but Burchett, 42, had fought the fire since Aug. 2, when he drove west from Utah with five others to help out.
On Tuesday, before dispatching the crews he commanded, Kavanaugh had to try to make sense of Burchett’s death.
“Hey good morning,” Kavanaugh said at the group briefing. “As many of you are aware, last night we had a tragic incident affect one of our fellow firefighters. A lot of folks were affected by it, and a lot of folks will continue to be affected by it. So I want to start this meeting with a moment of silence.”
For 22 seconds, no one spoke.
Burchett was the sixth firefighter to be killed this year responding to California’s historic wildfires, in the most lethal season since 2008. For more than 30 days, firefighters on the lines have shrouded their badges and flags have hung at half-staff.
Two men died in the Ferguson Fire in and around Yosemite National Park. Three more died in the Carr Fire that struck Redding and Shasta County. Burchett’s was the first death at the Ranch Fire, which at 305,000 acres and growing is the largest wildfire in state history.
Burchett was a wildland firefighting specialist who left his wife and 6-year-old son behind in Utah to help fight blazes in California for a few weeks. According to friends and colleagues, he was a paramedic and a captain who had trained on hotshot crews — the elite teams sent to the hottest parts of fires — before joining the Unified Fire Authority, which as the biggest fire agency in Utah protects communities in Salt Lake County. In May, he joined the Draper City Fire Department.
Bright, compassionate, funny, professional — those were the descriptions from those who knew him well. He had an infectious smile and loved to bring his young son into the firehouse. And he was a good listener. At the end of long work days, he would sit in the backseat of his pickup with colleagues and reminisce about everything that had happened.
“We would just sit there and giggle and listen,” said Mike Watson, the assistant chief of the Unified Fire Authority and Burchett’s former training officer. “He was just a great mentor, incredible teacher and leader. He was just one of those people you could count on.”
He was an athlete, too, who went on trips to ski, kayak and cycle. Burchett and Watson once biked the 206-mile LoToJa amatuer road race from Logan, Utah, to Jackson Hole, Wyo.
“He gravitated toward things that most people don’t like to do, and that’s what made him special,” Watson said.
Unified Fire Authority Battalion Chief Clint Mecham recalled his friend as the “whole package.”
“Even if you were just having a bad day, whether it be because of the job or if you were just having a crummy day, Matt was always the first one to reach out and say, ‘Do you need to talk about it?’ ” Mecham said. “He was just always there for you if you needed it.”
Kavanaugh, the incident commander, had been at the Mendocino Complex for 17 days when the call came through Monday night on the radio — an incident within an incident, or an IWI in fire lingo.
“Major injuries to a firefighter,” the radio report said. “Ambulance and air ships dispatched.”
It was just after 5:35 p.m., and Kavanaugh was wrapping up a planning meeting with about 30 others to map the next day’s operations. The Ranch Fire was rippling along its borders, pushing outward and making full containment impossible. The blaze’s behavior was erratic and extreme, forcing firefighters to chase its perimeter day after day.
Burchett had been working on a strike team on the northwest edge near Lake Pillsbury. Somehow, he had been injured and was being flown to a hospital in a helicopter.
At first, the radio call was worrisome — but not necessarily tragic. Often, alerts for injured firefighters were for superficial wounds. Those could heal. But 50 minutes later, the radio sounded again. Burchett had died.
“Not again,” Kavanaugh thought. But this time, it was someone on his team who had died.
A series of plans went into effect that night. Officials made sure they had the right identity for Burchett. They put out a department notification. They sent officers to the family home more than 770 miles away in Draper.
On the section of fire line where Burchett had been working, commanders called back around 50 firefighters who had been nearby and booked them hotels so they could sleep comfortably and deal with what happened. New firefighters were sent to fill the slots. There were still flames to fight.
Just after 10 p.m. at the Ukiah fire camp, officials held a news conference. Firefighters lined the back, behind the cameras.
“There’s no easy route around this,” Kavanaugh said. “It’s a difficult thing for everybody. There’s no way of getting around it.”
On Tuesday, the fire camp woke slowly. The firefighters were weary — of battling a fire that defied containment, of being so far from their families, of friends dying in blazes that were bigger and more destructive than any they had ever seen. And still there was work to do.
The Ranch Fire was 68 percent contained, but thousands of acres of steep and rugged terrain were still burning. So, after a moment of silence under a big white awning, Kavanaugh walked down the three steps off
the stage. Incident Cmdr. Jerry McGowan took his place.
“Good morning everyone!” he said.
“Good morning,” the firefighters responded, tepidly.
“That’s not what I want to hear,” McGowan said. “I want to hear it again. Good morning everyone.”
“Good morning,” they said, louder.
“I haven’t forgotten about yesterday, believe me,” McGowan said. “But we still have a fire . ... There could be a possible push this way, and this way, and this way. It’s going to get warm and dry. Sometimes I feel flat. I know you do, too. I get it. But I need you to focus. That’s my whole point here.”
He wanted to make sure there were no additional deaths — no car crashes, no mistakes, no surprises.
“I need you to make sure that when you get in that vehicle, when you go to work, even in this camp, that you are engaged,” he said. “I understand the flatness. But I need you to engage. I want you to have a good day.”
McGowan paused, then left the stage. The meeting was over. Firefighters streamed off to their tents or the breakfast line. One man, a blue baseball cap in his hands, remained seated. He waited a little longer, staring at the empty stage.
Then he left as well, putting the cap back on his head. In white embroidery, it said, “We work as one.”