Ken Picard shows off the tattoo he got to commemorate his years working on U.S. Forest Service crews as a wildland firefighter. Picard was among the more than 300 runners in the Prineville Hotshot Memorial Run/Walk held Saturday morning in Prineville.

PRINEVILLE — More than 300 runners gathered on a cold and rainy morning in Prineville Saturday to pay tribute to the victims of one of the worst wildland firefighting disasters in U.S. history.

The South Canyon Fire, popularly known as Storm King for the mountain near Glenwood Springs, Colo., where it began, killed 14 firefighters in July 1994, nine of them members of the Prineville Hotshots crew. Each spring since, Prineville has hosted a memorial run to remember the firefighters lost and raise money for the Wildland Firefighter Foundation, a group that provides financial support to families of wildland firefighters who have been killed or badly injured in the line of duty.

Race director Jake Ackerberg said last year’s run raised around $5,000, and this year’s event should bring in $6,000 to $6,500.

Ackerberg, who spent a few years as a Prineville Hotshot and now serves as a fire operations specialist with the Bureau of Land Management, said the people of Prineville still remember the South Canyon Fire 20 years later and have been strong supporters of the annual run.

“A lot of it’s about the community, maintaining that relationship between the families and the firefighters on the ground today, maintaining that connection,” Ackerberg said.

Kathy Brinkley, of Burns, whose son, Levi Brinkley, was among those killed on Storm King, has come to Prineville every year the run has been held. She said her son had left firefighting after spending six months to a year working on an engine crew in Eastern Oregon when he got the invitation to join the Prineville Hotshots.

Hotshot crews are highly regarded among wildland firefighters for their skills and resilience under difficult conditions, and for Levi Brinkley, the chance to join the Prineville Hotshots was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up, his mother said.

Brinkley said her son’s death did not extinguish her three other sons’ passion for fighting forest fires, two of whom are still at it today in Idaho.

“I think it’s the adrenaline; I think that’s why they like it,” she said.

Runner Ken Picard spent 20 years as a wildland firefighter, serving on a crew with Levi Brinkley not long before the South Canyon Fire. Wildland firefighters are a small club, Picard said, and nearly everyone who’s spent more than a few seasons fighting fires is connected to every death in some way.

“Every fire camp is like a high school reunion,” he said.

The run also serves as a reunion of sorts for the families of the Hotshots killed in 1994. Brinkley and Marv Kelso, whose son, Jon, was killed in the fire, said they’ve all become close, despite the circumstances that brought them together. Brinkley said relatives of seven of the nine firefighters killed on Storm King made it to Prineville for Saturday’s event.

“We’ve all said we wish we hadn’t met each other,” she said.

Kelso nodded, and added that being able to share the loss of his son with others experiencing the same thing has been a great help over the last 20 years.

“We kind of belong to a little fraternity nobody wants to belong to,” Kelso said.

— Reporter: 541-383-0387, shammers@bendbulletin.com