Daniel Lyon, the Puyallup firefighter who lost three comrades and suffered severe burns in the 2015 Twisp River Fire, still has major life goals ahead of him.
“The fire didn’t burn those goals out of me,” he tells KNKX Radio of Tacoma in a new interview and profile by journalist Kari Plog and producer Ariel Van Cleave. "I still want to go climb mountains, and ride motorcycles. And, be a police officer."
Lyon, now 28, was stationed in Winthrop in August 2015 when the Twisp River Fire was sparked by a tree branch contacting a power line. It would go on to become one of five fires comprising the 304,000-acre Okanogan Complex Fire.
Lyon and three other men — Tom Zbyszewki, 20, Andrew Zajac, 26, and Richard Wheeler, 31 — were dispatched in a truck to defend nearby homes, but crashed into a ravine due to obscuring smoke over the roadway. The fire reached the truck, and Lyon was the only occupant able to flee on foot. He was severely burned and hospitalized for three months.