Firefighter remembered one year after his death

He was born and raised to be a firefighter.

Brice Clayton Trossbach was a member of a first responder family. When his father, Warren, wasn’t farming he was busy doing mechanical repairs on vehicles at the Leonardtown firehouse. Brice and his older brother, Jared, spent a lot of time during their childhood at the local firehouse.

“He was extremely smart, pretty much a natural,” Jared Trossbach told Southern Maryland News when describing his brother’s prowess in battling flames, saving lives and property in the process. “He did the job to the best of his ability.”

For Brice Trossbach’s family — whether bonded by blood, love or the brotherhood of the region’s responder community — the one year anniversary of his death while fighting a house fire will be painful but perhaps somewhat buoyed by the appreciation shown to his sacrifice by the St. Mary’s, state and nation’s firefighting communities.

Answering the call

Sometime around 4 a.m. on Tuesday, June 27, 2023, firefighting crews from several local volunteer departments, along with Naval District Washington at Naval Air Station Patuxent River Fire Department, were dispatched to a house fire in the 20500 block of Deer Wood Park Drive in Leonardtown. Two alarms were sounded.

According to accounts from the Maryland State Fire Marshal’s office, the crews found “heavy fire” in the two-story, 2,500-square-foot home. The homeowners and neighbors later told fire investigators they had heard a loud sound consistent with a lightning strike. Residents living in the house were able to get out safely.

Brice Trossbach, 25, a career firefighter since 2019 at the local Navy base, was leading the crew of Engine 132 that morning. The naval station crew’s engine was the second to arrive at the scene.

Trossbach was part of a crew that entered the house to fight the fire. A report on the incident released by firehero.org said Trossbach “was operating the primary handline” when he was in the house.

“As firefighters conducted an interior attack, the first floor collapsed into the home’s basement, trapping Trossbach,” the fire marshal’s initial report stated. “A ‘mayday’ was issued and fellow firefighters rescued Trossbach.”

The valiant effort by a large number of responders to rescue the firefighter, reports indicate, was hampered by heavy debris in the basement. While emergency medical crews worked to resuscitate Trossbach, his injuries were too severe. After being rushed to a hospital, he was pronounced dead.

Two other firefighters sustained non-life threatening injuries in the fire.

While some is known about the deadly blaze and firefighters’ response, reports from two primary agencies are still unpublished a year later.

Honoring a brother, a local hero

Jared Trossbach, a lieutenant with the Prince George’s Fire and Emergency Medical Service Department, like his younger brother, Brice, was a fourth generation fire serviceman.

“It pretty much runs in my blood,” Jared Trossbach told Southern Maryland News.

During the eulogy he delivered at his brother’s July 6, 2023, funeral service at the Hollywood Volunteer Fire Department, he described Brice as “the greatest fireman I have ever known.”

Brice’s aim, Jared said earlier this year, was “to help people 100%. Just do the right thing.”

Having volunteered with Leonardtown Volunteer Fire Department and later Bay District’s company prior to becoming a paid firefighter, Brice Trossbach, who began his fire career as a probationary member at age 16 — two years before becoming a full member of Leonardtown VFD — had an active role in many of the day-to-day calamities in St. Mary’s County.

“He was involved in responding to several incidents,” Jared recalled. “An accident involving kids, a lady on base who attempted suicide — if he was available, if he was in town, he was ready to work. He was ready to help.”

The nearly two-hour service last summer was followed by a long procession of fire department vehicles, traveling past all three firehouses where Trossbach had served.

The tributes have multiplied since the young firefighter was inured at a Leonardtown cemetery last July.

Early last September, Little Flower School in Great Mills paid a posthumous tribute to Trossbach. The Catholic grade school hosts a 5-kilometer race called the Patriot Day 5K, honoring all responders around the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. Trossbach was honored as “Patriot of the Year.” Gifts and artwork were presented to Trossbach’s brother, his sister-in-law Kaitlyn, nephew Rhett and his fiancé, Cheyenne Sederbaum.

In late March, Trossbach’s parents — Warren and Diane Trossbach — traveled to Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas, where their son was one of five memorialized at the U.S. Department of Defense Fallen Firefighter Memorial.

During the first weekend of May, Trossbach was one of eight responders remembered at Maryland’s 39th annual Fallen Heroes Day observance at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium.

The ceremony included a procession of honor guard units, mounted officers and motorcycle police. The Trossbachs and other families received replicas of the Fallen Heroes Memorial.

Aruna Miller, Maryland’s lieutenant governor, spoke at the ceremony and recalled attending Trossbach’s funeral. To the grieving families, Miller (D) said, “They live through each of us.”

Two days later in Emmitsburg, family and friends were on hand as Trossbach was one of 89 firefighters — one of seven from Maryland — receiving tributes at the 43rd National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Weekend. The event is the mission of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation which holds it at a memorial park at the National Fire Academy.

Final reports pending

With the one year anniversary of the tragic fire approaching, investigating agencies have yet to divulge to the public any final reports. The day the blaze occurred, several state and local agencies converged on the site to begin the probe into the fire’s cause.

“The office of the state fire marshal, supported by their federal partners in fire investigation — the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, along with personnel from Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties — continue to examine the cause,” the state agency reported two days after it occurred.

The investigators used K9 teams, were assisted by heavy machinery to move the many layers of debris and conducted nearly 100 interviews.

“Those critical pieces of information, combined with weather data, video footage, forensic examination of wiring and piping and trace evidence will require extensive analysis,” the fire marshal’s report stated.

Master Deputy State Fire Marshal Oliver Alkire, public information officer for the agency, told Southern Maryland News last year, during the days following the tragedy, that the agency would solely be delving into the aspects of the fire’s cause, not procedural matters related to fighting the blaze.

Earlier this week, Alkire told Southern Maryland News the agency’s investigation of the fire “is open and active,” adding that the fire marshal’s office is still “waiting on a report by the medical examiner’s office.”

Alkire said fire marshal’s office officials have submitted “multiple requests” for autopsy information on Trossbach’s exact cause of death.

As to the cause of the fire, Alkire said, “lightning cannot be ruled out as part of the ignition sequence.”

Alkire said it was confirmed that a lightning strike did occur “about 750 feet from the house about an hour before the fire was discovered.”

He noted investigators logged approximately 48 hours at the site of the blaze and “no specific area of origin could be identified.”

Since Trossbach was, at the time, on duty with a federal firefighting company, a federal agency is charged with looking at the circumstances of his death.

“The Firefighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health investigated this fatality,” Julie Tisdale-Pardi, institute spokesperson, told Southern Maryland News in an email inquiring about the agency’s probe into the fire that claimed Trossbach’s life. “The final report is currently in review and therefore not yet public.”

Tisdale-Pardi stated the institute’s firefighter fatality investigation and prevention program “works to identify factors that contribute to firefighter deaths and provides findings and recommendations to prevent future tragedies.”

She added the institute “does not enforce compliance with regulations or assess culpability.”

Regardless, the tributes to Brice Trossbach continue. Most recently, a memorial bench was placed at the Leonardtown Wharf on June 10 to honor the Leonardtown High School graduate for his service.