Heart attack suspected in firefighter’s death

A volunteer firefighter who collapsed while battling a fire and died Thursday at Ukiah Valley Medical Center apparently had a heart attack.

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Robert Roland, 63, had joined the Anderson Valley Fire Department two months ago, said Chief Colin Wilson. He collapsed Wednesday on a fire line northwest of Philo in Mendocino County.

A former Marine and retired manager for an aeronautical engineering firm, Roland had recently moved to Anderson Valley from the San Diego area with his wife, Carol, Wilson said.

Retirees are a reliable source of recruits for volunteer departments, and the Anderson Valley department’s roughly 40 firefighters range in age from 17 to 70. Roland had been assigned as a fire lookout, Wilson said.

The fire he was fighting had threatened a subdivision of 40 homes but is now contained, Wilson said.

The Anderson Valley department had been staffing fires continuously for 12 days before going on mandatory stand-down after Roland’s death.

“When a member of a department dies, whether it’s a big paid department or a small volunteer department, it always hits hard,” Wilson said. “Everybody knows everybody. We know each others’ families. We socialize together. Part of the draw of a volunteer department is the bond that we have with each other and with our community.”

Heart attacks were the leading cause of wildfire-related deaths for volunteer firefighters and the third-leading cause of death for all wild-land firefighters, according to a 2007 report by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group.

Of the 310 firefighters who died in wildfire operations between 1990 and 2006, 72 were killed in aircraft accidents, 71 in vehicle accidents, 68 by heart attacks and 64 by “burnovers.” Volunteer firefighters accounted for 65% of heart attack deaths and 34% of all fatalities.

 mary.engel@latimes.com