B.C. family rallying around little girls who lost their firefighter dad in highway crash
CTV
Blain Sonnenberg's daughters — seven-year-old Brooklyn and four-year-old Trezley — were the light of his life.
Blain Sonnenberg's daughters — seven-year-old Brooklyn and four-year-old Trezley — were the light of his life.
“Oh, he was just so proud,” said Sonnenberg’s great aunt Collette Jones.
"He just loved them and nurtured them, and you know, he would play with them and sit on the floor with them and talk with them.”
The 27-year-old member of the Sts’ailus First Nation near Agassiz also loved his new job. He was working as a wildland firefighter this summer for a private company contracted by the provincial government.
“He tried all kinds jobs. He did logging. He did roofing, and he just didn’t like it. But when he got into firefighting, he loved it,” said Jones. “He’s saving homes and lives and people and animals out in those forests. He just loved it. He loved doing this.”
Last Tuesday, Sonnenberg was one of four firefighters killed when their pickup truck collided with a semi truck while driving back to Kamloops base after a 14-day deployment.
“We sat here just in shock, like it can’t be true,” said Jones. “He was just a beautiful person, he had his whole life ahead of him. Just taken like that. Just gone. And it’s just breaking our hearts, and we are saying, 'Why, why? How could this have happened?'”
