MINDEN, Nev. (AP) -- Three years after their firefighting airtanker went down while battling a wildland blaze near the center of a small Sierra town, the three-man crew was remembered Friday with a solemn ceremony at the airport where they were based.
''Just as the 2005 fire season is beginning, we recall that they gave their all in 2002,'' said Russ Bird, aviation manager for the Sierra Front Interagency Dispatch Center at the Minden-Tahoe airport.
''We need to remember what the risks are: The forest is important, but life is always the most important to us.''
On June 17, 2002, pilot Steve Wass, copilot Craig Labare and engineer Michael Harlow died when C-130A air tanker crashed while dropping retardant on the fire that threatened to engulf Walker, Calif., a strip of homes, curiosity shops and mom-and-pop motels straddling U.S. 395 90 miles south of Reno.
A Reno television crew caught the moment on videotape when the plane's wings broke off and the tanker crashed in a fiery explosion.
Mike Lynn, who flew with Wass and had flown in the doomed plane before the crash, attended Friday's observation.
''We're a very small family, closely knit. Things like this mean a lot to us,'' he said.
The crew's courage already has been noted by memorials near the site of the crash at Walker and in a park in Minden.
The new plaque hung at the Minden airport on Friday as members of Wass' family looked on listed the names of the men on the plane, followed by the phrase, ''Go West.''
Lynn said pilots of the airtankers see going west _ toward the setting sun _ as heading home after a long day.
Shortly after Wass died, a memorial service was held at Douglas High School in Minden.
During that service, fellow Minden pilot Brian Bruns performed a flyover in an airtanker that symbolically veered off to the west. Bruns was among three members of a P-3B air tanker crew who died in April in a training flight crash near Chico, Calif.
