Dozens of firefighters gathered at a funeral house in Chilliwack for a sombre ceremony Saturday morning, earlier than climbing aboard a number of hearth vehicles and main a funeral procession for Blain Sonnenberg.
He was one of many 4 wildland firefighters who died in a freeway crash early Tuesday morning as they made their method house from a two-week deployment on the entrance traces of essentially the most harmful wildfire season in British Columbia historical past.
Jaxson Billyboy, Kenneth Patrick and a fourth man had been additionally killed when their pickup collided with a semi-truck.
“It simply actually was heart-wrenching. Coronary heart-wrenching and sorrowful,” mentioned Lyliane Lafaut, who did not know any of the 4 personally, however organized a Saturday night memorial in Chase, the place she lives.
She advised CTV Information she had been positioned on evacuation alert earlier this summer time and has an amazing appreciation for the work firefighters did to realize the higher hand on the fireplace threatening her house.
“I used to be standing on my again balcony right here and I may see the flames,” she mentioned. “It is scary, scary. So scary.”
Again in Chilliwack, Indigenous drummers and singers lined the skin of the funeral chapel as Sonnenberg’s casket was carried to a car for the procession to his closing resting place on the Sts’ailes First Nation close to Agassiz.
The 4 firefighters killed within the crash all labored for Tomahawk Ventures, a non-public firefighting firm.
The youngest, Billyboy, was simply 19 and had graduated highschool in June.
In complete, six wildland firefighters have died in B.C. up to now this season.
“They go into the bush, and every time they step into these hearth zones, they’re risking their lives,” mentioned Lafaut.
