The tragic accident occurred as the firefighters were a couple of miles outside Lompoc, a small town in Santa Barbara County. There were no other occupants in the truck.
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Crews from the nearby Canyon Fire headed up to help fight the vegetation fire that started Thursday afternoon on the North Base of Vandenberg Air Force Base, which spread south and prompted evacuations, officials said.
The Ventura County Fire Department identified him as fire engineer Ryan Osler.
Firefighting resources at the Canyon Fire are assisting with the North Base fire, Vandenberg officials said. He was married with two children.
“(He was) just the most flawless person”, Leonard Yniguez said.
“(Osler) dedicated his life to protecting his fellow Californians”, Brown said in a statement.
“A line of duty vehicle accident” took place 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, according to Ventura County officials. “Our state’s courageous men and women risk their lives each and every day to keep us safe from fires, yet it is always terrible to hear of incidents in the field”.
The water tender struck a curb within a roundabout at Purisima Road and overturned, according to the California Highway Patrol.
Osler, 38, was a Valencia resident and 18-year member of the Ventura County Fire Department.
“Ventura County, we’re like a medium-sized fire department, but everybody seems to know everybody, and we’re all close, and we’re all friends”, Swindle told KPCC.
Firefighters focused Wednesday on the blaze’s southeast boundary.
The cause of the tragic crash was not immediately known..
In this Monday, Sept. 19, 2016 photo provided by the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, a fire burns several miles behind Space Launch Complex-3, housing the Atlas V rocket & WorldView 4 satellite, at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. Crews are working to surround the wildfire at the central California Air Force base that forced the postponement of a weekend satellite launch.
Almost 800 firefighters were trying to corral the fire that was slightly less than a square mile in size.
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A 1977 wind-whipped fire at Vandenberg killed the base commander, the base fire chief, an assistant chief and a bulldozer operator.
