FILLMORE, Utah — Cath Jolley and her husband spent Sunday afternoon praying, grateful to look up at a clear sky.
“When I’d look at the windows, you would just see smoke out there,” Fillmore resident Cathy Jolley said, recalling the past week. “We had to go around and tape all our windows so we could sleep at night.”
By Sunday, the sky outside the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Fillmore was clearer.
“It was nice to see the blue sky and think that maybe things are pretty much over,” Jolley said.
The changes come after a firefighting helicopter crashed Friday morning while battling the Widemouth 2 Fire. Late Saturday afternoon, fire officials confirmed that two pilots inside that helicopter were killed.
WATCH: Procession arrives and first responders salute bodies of firefighting helicopter pilots
As Jolley looks up at that sky, she’s thinking about the firefighters who lost their lives to make that happen.
“We lost some good people that were here to help us; it’s just hard,” Jolley said through tears.
On Sunday morning during a press conference, Sevier County Sheriff Nathan Curtis discussed their efforts to get to the crew in the minutes after the crash.
“When we got there, we could see two different plumes of smoke. One from the crash site, one from an active fire coming towards us. As responders were in the area, they were trying to get in there,” Curtis said during the press conference.
As they tried to get to the crash site, he said they were forced to retreat.
“If we had not moved some of our responders and hand crews out, they would’ve been trapped by the fire as well,” Curtis explained. “It was not an easy choice to move those responders. If we hadn’t done that, we would have lost more lives.”
The FAA and the NTSB will investigate the cause of the crash. Authorities have not identified the two people who died.
Tracy Keel, another Fillmore resident, had also spent Sunday at church thinking about the sacrifices made by those firefighters.
“Prayers were given to those that were lost, for rain, for those continuing to fight the fires, and for Mother Nature to cooperate,” Keel said.
For now, Jolley is holding on to a little relief.
“It may come up again, but it looks really good right now,” she said while looking at the sky. “We can see the mountains now.”
