PARK CITY, Utah — In Park City on Tuesday, first responders and community members lined the streets to say goodbye to Ryan Cutter.
Some in the crowd knew him very well.
“It never gets easier to lose a coworker, but it makes it especially hard when it's someone we were all very close to," said Sierra Hellstrom with the U.S. Forest Service.
While others didn't know him at all.
“I felt compelled to be here. We're a small town, and I wanted to make sure that they know that we appreciate him," said Park City resident Leslie Masters. "You don't realize what heroes we live next door to, and he was one.”
Ryan Cutter's death felt across the firefighting aviation community:
Cutter was one of the two helicopter pilots who died in an aviation accident last week while fighting the Dome Fire in Yosemite. While he wasn't able to finish his own journey home, other pilots did it for him.
In honor of Cutter, helicopters were involved in a procession for the first time.
“To have them flight-follow us along the entire path will be a memory that lives in all of our hearts," Hellstrom said. "[Cutter] loved his job. It was the light of his life.”
While it was time to say goodbye, it was also an opportunity to share support with a mourning community that is also working to keep residents and visitors safe.
Video below shows procession held for pilot Ryan Cutter:
“You don't appreciate the firefighters until something happens, until you need them in a fire, and then it's like, how can we really repay them? Otherwise, they're invisible heroes," Masters said.
“The public standing and lining the road, waving with flags, saluting. Those people may never know what that means to us," Hellstrom said, "every day we put on our greens and yellows and stand up to fight another day, knowing that we're risking our lives every time we take a step out that door.”
Now every time they hear that helicopter motor, they will look in the sky and think of Cutter and all those who lost their lives before him.