It started after one Tri-Cities firefighter died in 1992. The motorcycle ride now honors 10
When an aerial firework ignited Kennewick’s Jump Off Joe Butte, Paul Bjorklund helped battle the flames as they spread across 300 acres.
But the 25-year-old volunteer firefighter with Benton County Fire District 1 was killed when his two-ton fire truck overturned on the steep hillside.
It was July 4, 1992.
Every year since then, a fire district official has made the trip to Bjorklund’s grave site in Athena, Ore., to honor his memory.
The 70-mile journey then became a motorcycle run in Bjorklund’s name.
But after the on-duty deaths of two more Mid-Columbia firefighters in the last 12 years, the Independence Day trek honors all area firefighters who have “made the ultimate sacrifice.”
The list with the names of 10 first responders goes back to 1954.
Memorial ride from Kennewick
On July 4, firefighters, family and friends once again will set out from Kennewick on the Annual Tri-City Fallen Firefighter Memorial Ride.
Community members are invited to join in paying their respects and remembering the fallen firefighters.
“The journey to visit Firefighter Bjorklund’s final resting place is symbolic of visiting all of those that have given their lives in the line of duty,” Benton Fire District 1 said in its announcement.
Motorcycles and cars are asked to meet at 7:30 a.m. in the parking lot west of Kennewick Fire Department’s Station 61, 600 S. Auburn St.
The ride starts at 8 a.m. and should return to Kennewick by early afternoon.
Participants will travel on Highway 12 to College Place, then connect to Highway 125 toward Milton-Freewater, where they will stop for the rural fire district’s annual fundraising breakfast.
The route then goes to Athena via Highway 11. After visiting Bjorklund’s grave, participants will take Highways 334 and 37 through Cold Springs Canyon to Highway 730 along the Columbia River, and back to the Tri-Cities.
The round-trip ride covers about 150 to 175 miles.
10 firefighters over 65 years
The Tri-Cities fallen firefighters are:
▪ Chief Chet Bauermeister with Franklin County Fire District 4, who died in June 2010. He had led the fire district since late 2003. The 46-year-old Basin City man died when his ATV flipped and rolled about 100 feet down a steep slope while he was helping fight a brush fire in Adams County.
▪ Kennewick Firefighter Eric Lyons died July 5, 2007. A 13-year veteran of the fire department, Lyons had been working the busy holiday shift and collapsed at the Auburn Street station about midnight. The 37-year-old suffered a heart attack.
▪ Bjorklund was called with other firefighters from Benton Fire 1 to the late-night hillside blaze on Jump Off Joe Butte, south of Kennewick. He was riding on the back of the grass fire truck when it lost power and started to careen down a steep slope before rolling. It later was learned that the power brakes failed when the engine quit.
▪ Station Chief Arthur C. Shrives with Benton Fire District 1 died in July 1977. He suffered fatal burns when a fire whirl engulfed his rig on Candy Mountain.
▪ Five volunteer firefighters died in 1974 when a Benton Fire District 5 fire truck rolled off Ward Gap road in the Horse Heaven Hills near Prosser while fighting a June 30 wildfire. Three were killed that day. Two died in the following two weeks. They were John Barber, Donnie Offield, L. Eugene Roseberry, Ronald Riggs and Glenn Smith.
▪ Fire Chief Lawrence Matthias with Pasco Fire Department died in February 1954.