Firefighter dies in wind-fueled California wildfire

SAN FRANCISCO – A firefighter evaluating a Northern California wildfire was killed by the erratic, wind-stoked blaze while he was surveying an area to decide the best way for crews to handle the flames, a U.S. Forest Service official said Saturday.

Forest Service firefighter David Ruhl, 38, was in a vehicle in the Modoc National Forest and would have been scouting for ways to suppress the fire when crews lost contact with him Thursday evening, Forest Service spokesman Ken Sandusky said.

Officials said they couldn’t immediately say whether Ruhl had time to let others know by radio that he was in trouble, or whether flames overtook him too fast to call for help. His body was recovered Friday.

An investigation has begun to determine exactly what happened and whether there are any lessons to be learned from Ruhl’s death, Forest Service spokeswoman Heather Noel said.

“We owe that not only to the family and to the friends and to the employees that worked with Dave, but we also owe it to the agency and the rest of the firefighters, so that whatever did happen won’t be repeated, if possible,” she said.

Ruhl lived in Rapid City, South Dakota, with his wife and two children, who are devastated, said Scott Jacobson, Ruhl’s co-worker and a spokesman for the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota.

“He was a great husband, a great father and a great employee,” Jacobson said. “He was loved by everybody.”

Jacobson said Ruhl had been on temporary assignment since June in California, where he was an assistant fire management officer for the Big Valley Ranger District of the Modoc National Forest.

By Saturday, the blaze about 100 miles south of the Oregon border had burned nearly 3 square miles and was 5 percent contained.

In all, 23 large fires, many sparked by lightning strikes, were burning across Northern California on Saturday, said Daniel Berlant, spokesman for the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. About 9,000 firefighters were working to subdue them, something made incredibly difficult by several years of drought that have dried out California.

The fires prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency for California and activate the California National Guard to help with disaster recovery.