Originally published July 7 by The Spokesman-Review.
When the battalion chief from Northern Lakes Fire District walked up on June 29 to find out why the firefighters from Kootenai County and Coeur d’Alene were not answering their radios on Canfield Mountain, he heard a voice.
Lying on the ground and immobilized from his wounds, engineer Dave Tysdal, 47, warned his counterpart about the shooter, later identified as 20-year-old Wess Roley. Nearby lay fellow Battalion Chiefs John Morrison, 52, of Coeur d’Alene, and 42-year-old Frank Harwood, of Kootenai County Fire & Rescue. Both were dead.
“On the mountain that day, Dave saved a lot of lives,” Coeur d’Alene Fire Captain Nate Hyder said. “When battalion chief 5 got up there, Dave was able to alert him before anything happened to him. And they were able to get the message out. They were able to save a lot of lives.”
After his eventual rescue from what has been described as an ambush killing, Tysdal is listed in stable condition but remains in the intensive care unit at Kootenai Health Medical Center, department spokesman Erik Loney said Monday.
Tysdal suffered a shotgun blast to the right of his back that penetrated his body and destroyed his left clavicle, or collarbone. He also suffered a couple of broken ribs, Loney said.
While he is in stable condition after three surgeries, Tysdal can’t yet move below the chest.
“We are not saying he’s paralyzed,” Loney said. “He can’t move because of spinal swelling. We are hopeful once the swelling goes down that he will be able to move his legs again. We are trying to get him into a top-notch rehabilitation facility.”
Gabe Eckert, a firefighter and president of the Coeur d’Alene Firefighters IAFF Local 710, said he was driving back on June 29 from a trip to Washington when he got a page as he crossed into Idaho.
“My wife and I were talking about date night that we were going to have,” Eckert said, describing the moment he learned of a brush fire on Canfield Mountain.
“When I got into Post Falls, I saw the smoke,” he said. “The first (message) I saw was, ‘Firefighters down.’”
At the scene of the shooting, Tysdal somehow found a way to help, despite the seriousness of his injuries.
“Dave couldn’t move,” Loney said. “He was queuing his lapel mic with his chin. So by the grace of God, his mic ended up near his face. That’s how he was able to communicate.”
The Northern Lakes battalion chief, whom The Spokesman-Review agreed not to name, could have been the fourth shooting victim that day.
“Dave is the one who told him (Northern Lakes) to get down,” Eckert said. Had the Northern Lakes battalion chief “not been there, we wouldn’t have had that transmission. We wouldn’t have known what we needed to gear up for.
“We wouldn’t have known to get cops up there. We wouldn’t have known to get the BearCat up there. (Northern Lakes’) actions saved a lot of lives.”
Model firefighter
Hyder, the captain, said he’s worked 20 years with Tysdal in the Lake City.
“The thing about a department this size, we are only 63 people,” Hyder said. “We all know each other. There is no one in the department you don’t know pretty darn well. You know most of the people’s children’s names. If you don’t know their names, you know how many children they have.”
Tysdal has a teenage son and two girls who are twins. Loney said his wife hasn’t left his side at the hospital since the shooting.
In his personal time, Tysdal and his wife operate a Christmas tree farm west of Coeur d’Alene, Hyder said.
“He’s always doing a construction project around his farm. Whether it’s his house or a barn, or any of those things, or helping someone out. He’s talented. He can weld. He can be a carpenter. He can run equipment. He just has an amazing skill set,” Hyder said. “He’s just one of those guys.”
And at work, Tysdal has taught most of the other firefighters about nearly every technical-rescue discipline technique in the book.
“When the children come to the station, Dave loved seeing them. But when you talk to them about firefighters and you tell them what the firefighter profession is, that’s what Dave is,” Hyder said. “Dave is that model firefighter, model citizen, model husband, model friend. We just need him back.”
The shooting occurred just as Tysdal was in the middle of a major remodel of his home at the Christmas tree farm, said Andy Goodsell, a paramedic and firefighter with Coeur d’Alene.
“He was doing a lot of the work himself,” Goodsell said of Tysdal. “My goal is to take that burden off of him and to, as much as I can, to finish the project for them or facilitate having the project finished for them. So, when they come back, they can just focus on their family and his recovery.”
Eckert, the union head, said Tysdal needs support to make it back to the station, which is situated near the base of Canfield Mountain, where the shooting took place.
“We have focused a lot on John and Frank. And they need that focus, but Dave needs us, too,” he said.
Hyder echoed Eckert’s sentiment.
“Dave and John were bedrocks of the blue shift in Coeur d’Alene. One’s gone, and we can’t get him back. We are just trying to get the other one back,” Hyder said. “I’m hopeful, but I’m not naive.
“Someday he’s going to be sitting there in the engine with me, and I can’t wait for that day,” Hyder continued, referring to Tysdal. “But to get there, there’s a lot of challenges ahead. He and his wife are people I know who can do it. But it’s going to be a long, hard road.”
