Crews on Monday extracted the body of a firefighter from a steep ravine that his bulldozer had rolled into days ago as he fought a wildfire west of Yosemite.
The body of 36-year-old Braden Varney, a 10-year-veteran with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, remained in a mesh of mangled metal for three days in a site near El Portal that was too remote for bulldozers and too precarious to allow an immediate extraction.
Firefighters from Cal Fire Local 2881 had been standing sentinel over their colleague’s body, coming and going in shifts, hiking in and out of the remote niche, in a revolving honor guard. On Monday, Cal Fire said it recovered the body with assistance from California Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 5.