Officials at Naval Air Station Patuxent River have identified a firefighter who was killed while battling a blaze on Tuesday.
Twenty-five-year-old Brice Trossbach “made the ultimate sacrifice” while responding to a mutual aid request for a house fire in nearby Leonardtown, Maryland, the installation said in a news release.
Capt. Derrick Kingsley, commanding officer at NAS Patuxent River, called Trossbach’s death a “tragic loss” that serves as a reminder “of the tremendous risks our firefighters face each shift to keep our installation and our community safe.”
Trossbach had served as a firefighter at NAS Patuxent River since 2019, and had also joined volunteer fire departments in Leonardtown and Lexington Park.
“I’ve known Brice since he was a little kid following his dad to the Leonardtown fire station when I was the chief there, and he always wanted to be a firefighter,” Gerald Gardiner, deputy emergency services director for St. Mary’s County, said in a statement.
“To see him come up from that kid, to the man and firefighter he’d become, makes this loss especially hard,” Gardiner said. “His respect for those he helped, the mentorship he provided the younger guys coming up and the service he gave to the nation and Southern Maryland community will leave a big hole in our hearts.”
Trossbach was among several firefighters deployed to a two-alarm fire on the 20500 block of Deer Wood Park Drive before dawn on Tuesday. Fire officials said Trossbach became trapped beneath debris when the home’s first floor collapsed into the basement.
One other firefighter was transported with non-life-threatening injuries. The Maryland State Fire Marshal said more than a dozen of its investigators would continue their work on Wednesday to determine what caused the blaze.
