Chief Bryan Zollner was a committed‚ unselfish and knowledgeable member of the fire community who gave everything he had to make the world safe for others. He donated his home for use as a model in fire prevention materials distributed in the department’s statewide campaign for defensible space. He was greatly respected among firefighters and all who were lucky enough to have known him. Bryan came from a family with a legacy of firefighting. His father was a fire chief for the City of Oroville; his great grandfather was a firefighter in Detroit. His son‚ Ty Zollner‚ is currently an engineer with CAL Fire.

Bryan started as a sleeper firefighter in the Butte Unit while attending Butte Community College. In 1981‚ he was hired as a seasonal firefighter by the Butte Unit of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection‚ then known as CDF. He worked a year for the Oroville Fire Department as a fire protection operator before returning to CDF as a limited term Firefighter II in the Fresno-Kings Unit. In 1985‚ he returned to the Butte Unit as a limited term fire apparatus engineer with the Chico Battalion. He returned to CDF in 1986 as a permanent Firefighter II in Santa Clara Unit‚ received a quick promotion to fire apparatus engineer‚ and went to work at the Ramona Air Attack Base in San Diego. He was promoted three years later to fire captain at Bautista Conservation Camp in the Riverside Unit of CDF. He worked in the Riverside Unit at Home Gardens Station 13 and then Lake Hills Station 82. From there‚ he was promoted to Moreno Valley as Battalion Chief 9B.

In 2001‚ Bryan Zollner accepted the position of deputy chief with the public education office for CDF in Sacramento. In 2002‚ he came to Northern Region as deputy chief for conservation camp coordination and north ops operations. In 2005‚ he was named assistant chief operations in Tehama Glenn Unit. In 2006‚ he returned to Northern Region as staff chief for operations. Additionally‚ he worked on numerous incident command teams for CDF as an operations section chief‚ as a plans section chief‚ and was an incident commander. In 2003‚ Chief Zollner was on the incident command team on the Cedar Fire‚ a wind driven fire that ran through San Diego consuming land‚ property‚ and lives. Chief Zollner received the Medal of Valor in 1998 for an off-duty rescue of a child from a burning structure in Riverside.

Bryan Zollner is survived by his son‚ Ty Zollner; daughter-in-law Bailey Zollner; daughter Alexia Moore; son-in-law Charles Moore; two grandchildren; sister‚ Tracy Zollner; his parents‚ Bob and Brenda Zollner‚ of Oroville‚ California and Dr. Pamela Ikuta‚ of Redding‚ California.