Coeur d’Alene fire honors fallen Battalion Chief John Morrison, crews

Jill Morrison came to the Coeur d’Alene Fire Department’s annual awards banquet to see her husband’s crew honored, and to see the department reckon publicly with the absence of Battalion Chief John Morrison nearly a year after the Canfield Mountain ambush.

The evening centered on John Morrison, who was killed June 29, 2025, after a brush fire was reported on Canfield Mountain and the call turned into a deliberate attack that also killed Kootenai County Fire and Rescue Battalion Chief Frank Harwood and critically injured Coeur d’Alene Fire Engineer Dave Tysdal. Morrison was posthumously awarded the department’s Medal of Honor, a recognition that underscored how deeply the loss still runs through the city’s fire service.

Morrison had served with Coeur d’Alene Fire since 1997, building a 28-year career that carried him from Mead High School and Gonzaga University into the department’s daily work of protecting Coeur d’Alene and the surrounding community. His Celebration of Life was held July 10, 2025, at the Hagadone Event Center, where residents lined the procession route to pay their respects.

The banquet also recognized the people who kept the department functioning in the attack’s aftermath. Interim Police Chief Dave Hagar and City of Coeur d’Alene Streets Department workers Todd Feusier and Bandon Lopez were honored for processing and repairing emergency vehicles left on Canfield Mountain so they could return to service. That work, unglamorous but essential, helped restore a fleet that had been damaged at a moment when every truck and engine mattered.

Tysdal, who survived the attack with severe injuries, presented union awards to firefighters Bill Dodd, Matt Glenn, Andy Goodsell and retired firefighter Matt Smith for helping him and his family through his recovery. Their recognition pointed to a broader culture inside the department, one that treats injury, grief and return-to-duty as shared responsibilities rather than private burdens.

The department also singled out community members and partners who gave support after the ambush. Jen and Ben Drake, owners of Crown and Thistle, were recognized for providing a place where firefighters and family members could gather, grieve and heal. Coeur d’Alene Resort president Bill Reagan received recognition for helping secure and plan the memorial services for Morrison and Harwood.

The Canfield Mountain attack remains one of the darkest events in recent local fire service memory. More than 300 local, state and federal officers responded, and the fire linked to the ambush, later described as the deliberately lit Nettleton Gulch Fire, burned about 23 acres. The awards banquet did not try to move past that history. Instead, it showed how Coeur d’Alene Fire is carrying it forward through ceremony, mutual aid and institutional memory that still shapes readiness today.