Nine fallen Los Angeles city and county firefighters will be among 37 firefighters honored Saturday at the annual California Firefighters Memorial Ceremony in Sacramento, where their names will be added to the California Firefighters Memorial.<\/p>\n
The Los Angeles honorees include five members of the Los Angeles Fire Department and four members of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, according to the California Fire Foundation.<\/p>\n
The LAFD members are Fire Inspector Jerry R. Brakeman, who died Sept. 18, 2020; Capt. Mark A. Martinez, who died May 8, 2021; Fire Inspector Don R. Forrest, who died Sept. 3, 2024; Fire Inspector Ramon Carrasco, who died Feb. 25, 2025; and Capt. Gustavo Perez, who died July 1, 2025.<\/p>\n
The Los Angeles County Fire Department honorees are Firefighter Specialist Ismael M. Villalta-Ayala, who died Aug. 4, 2022; Firefighter\/Paramedic Dustin Roberto, who died Aug. 10, 2024; Capt. Michael H. Mercado, who died Dec. 8, 2024; and Capt. David C. Gonzalez, who died April 14, 2025.<\/p>\n
Orange County Fire Authority Engineer Kevin M. Skinner, who died Jan. 5, 2025, will also be honored at Saturday\u2019s ceremony.<\/p>\n
The firefighters are among 20 Southern California firefighters whose names will be added to the memorial, according to the foundation. A total of 37 firefighters will be honored statewide.<\/p>\n
The names will join those of 1,593 California firefighters who have died in the line of duty since California became a state in 1850, according to the foundation.<\/p>\n
More than 1,000 family members and firefighters from across California are expected to participate in Saturday\u2019s events.<\/p>\n
The memorial ceremony is scheduled from 3 to 5 p.m. Saturday at the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center in Sacramento. A public recessional will follow from 5 to 6 p.m. through Capitol Park to the California Firefighters Memorial.<\/p>\n
The recessional is expected to include hundreds of uniformed firefighters, firefighting apparatus, honor guards and the Pipes and Drums of California Professional Firefighters.<\/p>\n
The ceremony will also include a formal U.S. flag presentation to the families of firefighters whose names are being added to the memorial.<\/p>\n
The California Fire Foundation said cancer continues to be the leading cause of death in the fire service, citing California Professional Firefighters.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s ceremony coincides with California Firefighters Memorial Day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nine fallen Los Angeles city and county firefighters will be among 37 firefighters honored Saturday at the annual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7,4853,59271,48,52,51,47,50,49,24282,189271],"class_list":["post-483283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-california","tag-firefighters","tag-honored","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-memorial","tag-nine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}