The two pilots killed on a Utah wildfire have been identified, and friends and family are sharing what they’ll miss about Chris Andersen and Miles Elliott. Their deaths have also further shaken the wildland fire community, which has lost a number of firefighters during the intense and ongoing season.
Andersen and Elliott were working for U.S. Forest Service contractor Helicopter Transport Services on Utah’s massive Widemouth 2 Fire. Their huge Sky Crane chopper went down on Aug. 7.
On Tuesday, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox ordered flags at state facilities to be lowered to half-staff.
In a post, he said the men “dedicated their lives to serving others, and they made the ultimate sacrifice while protecting our state. Utah mourns with their families and loved ones and honors two men who came to our aid when we needed them most.”
Federal helicopter manager Jessica Reeves worked closely with the pair this season.
“I just want to get out how amazing these men were,” she told the Mountain West News Bureau. “And it's going to be a really big loss for the aviation community for sure.”
She’ll remember Andersen as a deeply experienced pilot who had flown missions around the world, and who could be counted on in the toughest conditions.
“He was one of the most badass crane pilots,” she said.
“He fought forest fires for people to save their homes and their property that he didn’t even know,” his brother Ric Andersen told Utah’s ABC4. “So he was that rare guy [who] didn’t run from a problem, he ran to the problem. And what he did was really dangerous.”
Ric Andersen shared a lengthy remembrance of his brother on social media that details his brother’s U.S. Army service and decades of pilot work on all but two continents.
“For those who loved him, there is profound sorrow in the retirement he had prepared for but did not get to enjoy,” Ric Andersen wrote. “There is also great pride in the life he did live—one defined by service, mastery of his craft, generosity toward those who followed him and an enduring willingness to place himself in harm’s way so that others might be safer.”
Reeves, the helicopter manager, will cherish memories of Elliott taking advantage of quiet moments on fires to play the online video game Fortnite with his son back home in California.
“What I remember most about him is him trying to be in touch with his son as much as he could,” she said. “The way that he spoke about his son, and how he was excited to get back to him, that is something that I definitely actively remember.”
Elliott is survived by his fiancé and their son, and many other family members, according to a social media post from the fire department in his hometown of Porterville, California.
“Miles represented the very best of Porterville,” the town’s Mayor Greg Meister said in the post. “He was a devoted father, pilot, entrepreneur, photographer, mentor, and an incredibly gifted person who used his talents to serve others and give back to the community he called home.”
The two pilots’ deaths are just some of the latest during an intense and destructive wildfire season. The day before, bulldozer operator Jason Ensign was killed in Southern Oregon and on Tuesday, Leslie Washington died after a medical emergency on a fire in Minnesota.
More than a dozen deaths have been logged so far this season, including five others in fire’s tight-knit aviation community. Over the last decade, nearly 16 firefighters have been killed on the fireline every year, on average.
“We are pretty overwhelmed right now,” said Reeves, who also had connections to the deadliest incident so far this year – a burnover of helitack crewmembers on the Colorado-Utah border in late June that ultimately took four lives. “We're gutted by the losses.”
She’ll remember this summer not just for its multiple tragedies, she explained, but also the many ways that firefighters have shown up for each other in their wake.
“I will never forget this season,” she added. “I know a lot of others won't either.”
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio and KJZZ in Arizona as well as NPR, with support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.