NEW TAZEWELL, Tenn. (WATE) — Members of the Tazewell community gathered to celebrate the life of Capt. Roy Sewell Jr., the North Tazewell Volunteer Firefighter who died after the fire engine he was driving overturned.

Sewell was responding to an ATV crash involving a child at the time. He was on his way to set up a landing zone for the LifeStar helicopter to pick up the injured child.

Matt Seals is the chief of the Springdale Volunteer Fire Department and has known Sewell since they were in elementary school together.

“It just broke my heart, because all I could think of was his wife, and the little girl and just his family and him being taken away at such a young age,” Seals said.

Seals said he and Sewell became firefighters at the same time.

“We joined when we were both pretty young and done our fire one and two and our live burn and all that together and Roy was just a top-of-the-line person,” he said.

He said though they worked at different departments, the fire community supports each other.

“Roy was a very dependable person when a call came out from North Tazewell, we’re all pretty close-knit community here, we all got different names over the doors, different names on the trucks but we all run pretty much as one family when something major breaks out it doesn’t just hurt them it hurts everybody,” Seals said.

Multiple fire departments attended the celebration of life, including firefighters from Knoxville. Captain Chris Hinkle with Knoxville Fire Department said tragedies like this impact the entire fire community.

“It puts a lot of things into perspective when we have something like this happen, even though it’s not in our department and they’re a little distance away. You try not to think about the dangers and the risk when you’re at work you try to just focus on your job and doing it right,” Hinkle said. “But accidents do happen, so when you hear of one or see one, it does make you think about it and think about your family, and if something was to happen, but you try to push that out of your mind and do your job as best you can.”

He also said firefighters support each other no matter what.

“We’re all a big fire family, doesn’t matter what department, doesn’t matter career or volunteer, we’re all a big fire family, especially here in East Tennessee. So, we just all wanted come and show our support, pay our respects, and show our support to the department and family and let them know that we’re here for whatever they need.”

Sewell was 27 and leaves behind his wife, daughter and another baby on the way.