Justin Beebe loved nature, especially the woods.
He was also a hard worker who always put others before himself, his lifelong friend Colin James said.
So it seemed only natural that Beebe combined these elements and joined the Lolo Hotshots crew to fight wildland fires.
“This was the job of his dreams,” James said.
The U.S. Forest Service firefighter died around 4 p.m. Saturday after a dead tree fell on him as he was fighting the Strawberry Fire at Great Basin National Park, about 300 miles northeast of Las Vegas.
The 26-year-old from Bellows Falls, Vermont, was in his first year as a member of the Lolo Hotshots based in Missoula, Montana. He was working on a fire sparked by lightning on Aug. 8. There are 434 people fighting the Strawberry Fire, now 59 percent contained.
Beebe succumbed to injuries after being struck by a snag during firefighting efforts, said Julie Thomas, spokeswoman for the Great Basin Incident Management Team 7, which is managing the fire with the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. A snag is a standing dead tree or part of a dead tree left after a forest fire.
The Forest Service is investigating the line-of-duty death, Thomas said.