Oregon Crash Kills 8 Firefighters

(AP)  A van full of firefighters on their way home from a wildfire collided with a tractor-trailer and exploded in flames Sunday, killing all eight inside and injuring the two people in the truck.

The firefighters, all men under the age of 23, were returning to Oregon from an Idaho wildfire late Sunday morning, when the van crashed on a remote eastern Oregon highway about 15 miles west of Vale.

According to Malheur County Undersheriff Brian Wolfe, the van had apparently tried to pass another truck on a curve and crossed the double-yellow line before it collided head-on with the tractor-trailer.

The occupants of the Swift Co. tractor-trailer were able to free themselves and were taken to an Ontario hospital with dislocations and burns. Police say their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.

It took more than seven hours for the highway to reopen, once authorities recovered the bodies and highway crews shoveled ash and debris onto trucks.

The wreckage of the van and the semi were almost indistinguishable. The charred frame of the van was torn in two. The cab of the semi was demolished but the diesel exhaust stack remained erect.

The firefighters worked for First Strike Environmental, a Roseburg-based contract firefighting company.

First Strike spokeswoman Leslie Habetler said six of the men were from Douglas County, the southwestern Oregon county that includes Roseburg, and two were from the Portland area.

The van had been traveling with a First Strike van and a truck. Both those vehicles were about six miles ahead and did not see the crash. But when the first two vehicles in the convoy lost radio contact with the third - and noticed smoke rising behind them - they doubled back and discovered the crash.

First Strike's Web page says it has been in business for more than 15 years, deals with a wide variety of emergency environmental situations in the West and keeps about 200 firefighters on call during forest fire season.

The crash is being investigated by the Malheur County Sheriff's Office and the Oregon State Police.

Fire coordinators said the van was coming back from a wildfire in the Boise National Forest about 25 miles northeast of the town of Cascade, Idaho. Wildfires have erupted in many parts of the northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest this summer, but recent rains have helped firefighters gain ground on many of the blazes.

The men were on their way home after completing a 14-day work contract. Most of the men had two or three years of firefighting experience, she said, though there were a few new crewmembers.

Before Sunday, 19 firefighters assigned to wildfires had died on duty this year, according to Tracey Powers, spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise. Nine died in motor vehicle or aviation accidents, three died in fires, six died of illnesses and one died when a tree fell on his tent.

In June 2002, five firefighters in an Oregon-based contract crew were killed when their van overturned in Colorado near Parachute on the way to a fire near Denver. Nine Oregon firefighters were among the 14 killed in 1994 when fast-moving flames overtook them on Storm King Mountain in western Colorado.