Southwest incident team leader Clay Templin said the crew and its commanders were following safety protocols, and it appears the fire’s erratic nature simply overwhelmed them. The blaze grew from 200 acres to about 2,000 in a matter of hours. Prescott City Councilman Len Scamardo said the wind changed directions and brought 40 mph to 50 mph gusts that caused the firefighters to become trapped around 3 p.m. It was unclear exactly how the firefighters became trapped, and state officials were investigating.īrewer said the blaze “exploded into a firestorm” that overran the crew. Residents huddled in shelters and restaurants, watching their homes burn on TV as flames lit up the night sky in the forest above the town. Among them were several other Hotshot teams, elite groups of firefighters sent in from around the country to battle the nation’s fiercest wildfires. The lightning-sparked fire - which spread to 13 square miles by Monday morning - destroyed about 50 homes and threatened 250 others in and around Yarnell, a town of 700 people in the mountains about 85 miles northwest of Phoenix, the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department said.Ībout 200 more firefighters joined the battle Monday, bringing the total to 400. Jan Brewer, her voice catching several times as she addressed reporters and residents at Prescott High School in the town of 40,000. I know the pain that everyone is trying to overcome and deal with today,” said Gov.
“I know that it is unbearable for many of you, but it also is unbearable for me. In a heartbreaking sight, a long line of white vans carried the bodies to Phoenix for autopsies.
The deaths plunged the two small towns into mourning as the wildfire continued to threaten one of them, Yarnell.Īrizona’s governor called it “as dark a day as I can remember” and ordered flags flown at half-staff. Only one member survived, and that was because he was moving the unit’s truck at the time.
The tragedy Sunday evening all but wiped out the 20-member Granite Mountain Hotshots, a unit based at Prescott, authorities said Monday as the last of the bodies were retrieved from the mountain in the town of Yarnell.
(AP) - With no way out, the 19 elite firefighters did what they were trained to do when trapped by a wildfire: They unfurled their foil-lined, heat-resistant tarps and rushed to cover themselves on the ground.īut that last, desperate line of defense couldn’t save the “Hotshot” crew from the flames that swept over them.Īll 19 men died, marking the nation’s biggest loss of firefighters in a wildfire in 80 years.
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