'A hole in our state's heart': 3 firefighters mourned
(AP) — The firefighters — members of a specially trained unit that is sent into danger ahead of everyone else to size up a wildfire — rushed up a narrow, winding gravel road with steep hills on either side.
The tragedy Wednesday night cast a pall in Washington state and 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.
The blazes have "burned a big hole in our state's heart," Gov. Jay Inslee lamented Thursday, describing the outbreak as an "unprecedented cataclysm."
Fire officials with notebooks and cameras walked the hills and banks near Woods Canyon Road outside Twisp, investigating how the disaster happened.
Authorities gave few details, shedding no light, for example, on the crash, other than to say that it was not the accident itself that killed the victims, but the fire.
The deaths happened in the scenic Methow River valley about 115 miles northeast of Seattle, where a series of blazes covering close to 140 square miles had merged.
The flames burned an undetermined number of homes and triggered orders to about 1,300 people in the outdoor-recreation communities of Twisp and Winthrop to evacuate.
Zbyszewski was a junior at Whitman College in Walla Walla, majoring in physics and active in the school's theater department, the college's president said in a statement.