Joe Bass

Fireman Joe Bass an Illinois firefighter helping the Bureau of Land Management died on July 11, 1980 when the plane he was in helping drop batteries to fire fighters fighting a two-acre wild fire crashed. It was speculated that the parachute of the package the were dropping either opened prematurely inside the plane or got caught in the tail end upon exit causing the plane to crash into an isolate peak of the Schell Creek Range.