Bodies of firefighters killed in Arizona returning home
The bodies of two firefighters with SouthernCalifornia roots who were killed while battling an Arizona wildfire will beflown home today for a ceremony in Los Alamitos.
The “Memorial Ramp Ceremony,” which was being coordinated in part bythe California Fire Foundation’s Last Alarm Service Team, will be held at theJoint Forces Training Base for 21-year-old Kevin Woyjeck and 30-year-oldChristopher MacKenzie.
MacKenzie, who was raised in the San Jacinto Valley, graduated fromHemet High School in 2001.
Firefighters will escort their bodies to mortuaries in preparation forfuneral services. MacKenzie will be taken to the Miller Jones Mortuary inHemet, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection,while Woyjeck will be taken to Forest Lawn in Long Beach.
Services for MacKenzie are 6 p.m. Saturday at the Ramona Bowl, 27400Ramona Bowl Road, Hemet. Details of services for Woyjeck have not yet beenreleased.
The two were among 19 firefighters with the Granite Mountain InteragencyHotshot Crew, an elite wildland firefighting unit, who died near Yarnell,Ariz., June 30 in the worst wildland firefighting loss in the U.S. since the1933 Griffith Park Fire in Los Angeles, where 29 firefighters were killed.
Woyjeck was the son of Los Angeles County Fire Department Capt. JoeWoyjeck. He was a former member of the Los Angeles County Fire Department’sExplorer Post 9, and worked with Care Ambulance Service in Southern California.
MacKenzie started his career as a seasonal firefighter with the U.S.Forest Service, and served on the Tahquitz crew in the San Jacinto NationalForest. He then served on a helicopter crew for the Bureau of Land Managementand the Mill Creek hotshots in the San Bernardino National Forest. He wasinvited to apply to the Granite Mountain hotshot crew by Aaron Stevens, one ofhis former captains, and had just started his third season as a full-timeemployee with the Prescott Fire Department as a lead crew member, according toCal Fire.
The California Emergency Management Agency and the state National Guardwere also coordinating the ceremony.
