On the Burning Edge (33 page)

CHAPTER 16

During my visits to Yarnell, Lois and Truman Ferrell told me about watching the Yarnell Hill Fire ignite and the hours and days that followed. Russ Shumate’s story came from comprehensive interview transcripts and handwritten notes from both the Arizona Department of Occupational Safety and Health Investigative Report and the Serious Accident Investigation Report. These notes, obtained through FOIA requests from the excellent independent journalist John Dougherty, among many others, also provided the foundation for all the Yarnell Hill chapters that follow. Amanda Marsh told me about her dinner with Eric Marsh on June 29, and McDonough and Jeff Bunch, the bartender, told me about the hotshots stopping to get a beer at Moctezuma’s that same night.

CHAPTERS 17
–
23

The book
From Tragedy to Recovery: The Yarnell Hill Wildfire of 2013
(Createspace), released by the Yarnell Chamber of Commerce, provided the history of Yarnell. Details of Granite Mountain and other firefighters’ experience on the Yarnell Hill Fire on June 30 came from conversations with Todd Abel, Conrad Jackson, Steve Emery, the Ferrells, and McDonough, as well as interview transcripts and notes from, among others, Abel, Russ Shumate, Byron Kimball, Gary Cordes, Paul Musser, Darrell Willis, Rance Marquez,
Rory Collins, Brian Frisby, Rogers Trueheart Brown, three other Blue Ridge Hotshots, and the hikers Joy Collura and Tex Gilligan.

Both official investigations into the tragedy provided a timeline of events for the fire and details about the number of tanker drops, weather updates, firefighter movement, and the fire’s rate of spread. Chuck Maxwell told me about the scene in Albuquerque and explained the weather phenomena in play that day. John Wachter also helped explain the day’s weather. Heather Kennedy described the weather in Prescott and provided her text message conversations with Scott Norris. Photo and video evidence from McDonough’s phone, in addition to videos recovered from Chris MacKenzie’s burned phone and camera, helped me re-create the near midair collision. It’s important to note that aviation experts speculate that the aircraft were in fact a safe distance apart. I relied on McDonough’s telling of the incident, as well as the videos and Scott Norris’s text message, because they demonstrate how the hotshots’ nerves were frayed hours before the tragedy.

The number of firefighters on scene came from a comprehensive list of resources used to fight the blaze. Carrie Dennett, the state’s excellent public information officer, provided this list.

Experts on Yarnell Hill will notice a slight time discrepancy between the book’s version of events and the official investigation. The investigation has McDonough getting pushed off his lookout at 3:55
P.M.
, but time signatures on photos that McDonough shot at Granite Mountain’s rigs, after Frisby picked him up, show that this event occurred twenty-four minutes earlier. As firefighters reported reliable cell service in the area, there’s little reason to doubt the accuracy of McDonough’s phone. Logic, too, would dictate that Steed received the fire-wide weather update at the time it was delivered (3:26
P.M
.) and not twenty-four minutes after (3:50
P.M
.). Cell-phone video recordings documented a number of radio conversations between Marsh and Steed that took place while the hotshots were on the ridge, and McDonough provided the details of Marsh and Steed’s radio conversation about whether to leave the safety of the black.

The radio transmissions delivered moments before the hotshots died were recorded on a helmet-camera video shot by firefighters working near Glen Ilah. The flames’ rate of spread and the fire behavior in the basin at the time the men were killed were determined through fire-behavior analysts whose research was included in the official investigation. Calculations based on these reports were used to estimate the distance between the flames and the hotshots during the final radio conversations Steed, Marsh, Caldwell, and Abel had with Bravo 33. Details of what it’s like to deploy came from accounts by burnover survivors and from training procedures all hotshots are required to go through. A former hotshot superintendent who visited the deployment site days after the hotshots’ deaths passed on the detail of a
deer racing out ahead of the flames. He found the recently burned body of a deer near the site. Post-accident reports compiled by Eric Tarr and the helicopter pilot were used to re-create the scene at the fatality site, and a body-location map plus details from the Yarnell sheriff’s department were used to describe the condition and location of each fallen hotshot.

EPILOGUE

Steve Emery provided me with his story. McDonough described the moments after the fatalities were reported, the funerals, and the weeks after. The scene at Mile High Middle School was described by Heather Kennedy, Karen Norris, Claire Caldwell, Bunch, Packer, Maldonado, and others. I attended the hotshots’ memorial at the stadium in Prescott Valley.

Information about the tribute fence came from Dottie Morris, one of the founders of the Tribute Fence Preservation Project.

K
YLE
D
ICKMAN
is a former editor at
Outside
magazine and a former member of the firefighting crew known as the Tahoe Hotshots. He spent five seasons fighting wildfires in California. Dickman’s reporting has been nominated for a National Magazine Award. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife, Turin.

@KyleDickman