On July 13, Gunnison County Sheriff Adam Murdie has confirmed that the Montrose County Sheriff's Office Dive team has recovered the body of the pilot, 56-year-old Nicholas Dale, of Sooke, British Columbia from a K-MAX helicopter which went down in the Silver Jack Reservoir in southwest Gunnison County.
At 5:17 p.m. on July 12 the Gunnison Regional Communications Center received a call regarding an aircraft went down in the reservoir. The aircraft has been confirmed to have been engaged in firefighting operations with the Gold Mountain Fire. In late June, three firefighters perished while fighting a wildland fire on the Colorado/Utah border
On Monday morning, the Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team (level 3) reported the fire is 11% contained, and now at 36,259 acres with 985 firefighters assigned to the fire.
The current level 3 incident management team announced it will transfer control operations to a level 2 incident management team on Tuesday. Level 2 teams are comprised of highly trained, interagency members and are assigned to oversee more complex fires.
We will update this breaking news as it happens.
(In this photo from the official Gold Mountain Fire Facebook page, an aircraft drops retardant on the fire.)
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