On February 28, 1982, our agency lost a brother firefighter in the line of duty. Firefighter William E. Duncan suffered a fatal abdominal injury after falling on ice at the scene of an early morning house fire in the Montara neighborhood. It was determined that during the fall, his self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) caused an abdominal aneurysm which later ruptured.

Firefighter Duncan’s sacrifice is remembered on the Kansas and National Fallen Firefighters Memorials.