Yarnell Hill Fire
The Yarnell Hill Fire was a forest fire that was triggered by a lightning strike on June 28, 2013 at around 5:30 p.m. on a ridge of the Weaver Mountains near Yarnell , Yavapai County , Arizona , USA . The fire, which was classified as Type 1 according to the Incident Command System and lasted until July 10, destroyed an area of around 34 km² and more than 100 buildings of Yarnell and the approximately 1.6 km west of Glen Ilah. Nineteen firefighters from the Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew were killed, making the fire the most casualty U.S. Fire Department since the Griffith Park Fire in 1933 and the U.S. Fire Department's highest victims since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks .
Course of the fire
Due to the location of the fire in impassable mountainous terrain and the falling night, the fire fighting measures did not begin until the morning of the next day. By the intense heat and dryness of the chaparral vegetation called, the fire spread despite the use of water-bombing aircraft ever made, skipping this one as a two-track road designated two-lane mountain road in the east, which was trying to think of the firefighting teams in vain as a firebreak. By the evening the situation escalated. The fire burned northeast and threatened the Peeples Valley settlement , which is why the operations management requested a federal emergency team ( IMT ) and three Interagency Hotshot Crews ( IHC ). The "Hotshots" ( Blue Ridge , Granite Mountain and Arroyo Grande ) with a strength of 20 men are considered to be the elite fire service for fighting forest fires nationwide.
On the morning of June 30, the first evacuation measures had to be initiated in Peeples Valley, as the flame front continued to move northeast over a width of 2.4 km. From 3:30 p.m., strong winds from the northwest caused the fire to change direction and now drove the 3.2 km long flank of fire as a new head fire towards the southeast. From 4:18 p.m. onwards, the situation worsened due to a gust front from the north, which drove the flame front massively to the south and made it necessary to evacuate Yarnell immediately. The fire covered 1.6 km in 15 minutes and jumped over a firebreak drawn by fire-fighting aircraft with fire retardants. State Route 89 , which runs through Yarnell, has been closed for 35 km.
From 4:30 p.m., stormy winds from the northeast with top speeds of around 80 km / h whipped the flame front uncontrollably to the south-west, with the fire rolling over the northern part of Yarnell and the entire village of Glen Ilah before it hit the ridge in the west and in intensity lost. The next day there was only little fire activity and no new damage in the built-up areas. Nine days later the fire was completely out.
Deployment and death of the Granite Mountain Hotshots
The Granite Mountain Hotshots were a 20-man special force for the Prescott Fire Department's nationwide forest fire fighting and were certified as an Interagency Hotshot Crew (IHC) in 2008 . Her name came from a mountain in northwest Prescott.
As the first available hotshot unit, Granite Mountain was entrusted with the establishment of an anchor point on the morning of June 30th, a securely extinguished and monitored area to fight the flank of the fire, which was set up on the ridge south of the place where the fire started. It served to limit the fire to the extent found and from there to attack the flank of the fire. At the same time, it should be ensured that the fire does not stab the fire-fighting teams in the back. The hotshots created firebreaks and removed combustible vegetation. At this point the fire was only spreading in a northeasterly direction. The Superintendent of the Hotshots, Eric Marsh , was appointed supervisor of Division Alpha, which was responsible for the southern section of the fire. One of the hotshots, Brendan McDonough, was posted north of Yarnell as an observer to warn Granite Mountain that the fire should not change direction.
As the intensity of the fire increased, additional air support was requested but was not approved due to limited resources and other wildfires in Arizona. When the fire front shifted south, the hotshots withdrew to the safe ridge. At around 3:42 p.m., Planning Manager Paul Musser asked Eric Marsh for help in protecting Yarnell, but the latter had to refuse. A few minutes later, McDonough withdrew from his threatened position to a security zone and reported his departure by radio to his unit.
Shortly after 4 p.m., the hotshots left the safe zone and marched south-east along the Two-track Road on the ridge towards Boulder Springs Ranch, which had been classified as a safety zone at the morning briefing. They could see the fire as it approached Yarnell with increased speed. Operations management believed Granite Mountain would still be in a safe area. In addition, the emergency services were focused on protecting the endangered towns.
The Granite Mountain Hotshots ended up moving in a straight line down a U-shaped canyon that was covered with dry grass and bushes. As a result, they no longer had visual contact with the fire and they also had no observer assigned, which is why they did not notice the change in direction of the fire towards the southwest. The flame front was moving at about 20 km / h towards the entrance of the canyon and cut off the hotshots a few hundred meters from the ranch. After they had not had radio contact for about 30 minutes, Granite Mountain reported by radio at around 4:35 p.m. with the words that they were directly in front of the burning front. Due to the short and indefinite radio transmissions and idioms among all the emergency teams during the communication that day, only a few people were informed of the movements and intentions of Granite Mountain. This created confusion about the actual location of the hotshots at the time of the 911 call.
The flames, which were up to 24 meters high, hit the canyon in just two minutes and, due to the wind and the topography, covered 100 yards in just 19 seconds. The 19 firefighters had created a small protection zone and withdrew into their fire shelters . There, they died by the enormous heat development of over 1,090 ° C .
The Shelters could only be discovered from the air after about an hour's search. At around 6:35 p.m. ADPS- Paramedic Eric Tarr confirmed the deaths of all 19 firefighters. The residents of the Boulder Springs Ranch survived the fire due to the fire-resistant construction of the building and the lack of vegetation.
The death of the Granite Mountain Hotshots has been investigated by a State Serious Accident Investigation Team . According to its final report, the tragedy occurred when the firefighters were marching through an unburned area towards a security zone and were overwhelmed by a rapidly advancing fire of great intensity. The extreme speed of the fire made any opportunity impossible for them to reach the safety zone or return to the canyon rim. The men had less than two minutes to use chainsaws and burn out to create a makeshift safety zone. In their Fire Shelters, they were lying close together in a small area when the fire came over them. According to the experts on the investigation team, the site was not survivable because thick bushes caused direct flame contact and temperatures exceeded 2000 ° F as the fire swept through the site.
Why Granite Mountain left its safe position and headed for the ranch could not be known with certainty. By the time they reached the ranch, they probably wanted to get a better position to be ready for more work in Yarnell. Brendan McDonough, an observer north of Yarnell, was the only hotshot to survive the fire.
Effects
The forest fire was the first in the area since 1966 and had developed from a Type 4 to a Type 1 in less than 20 hours. 108 houses and 19 other structures fell victim to the flames. The Yavapai County appraisal office estimated the damage at US $ 17 million .
Between June 29 and July 1, fire fighting aircraft flew 116 missions, 72 of them on June 30, completing 59 hours of flight and deploying over 778,000 liters of extinguishing agent. On July 1, there were also 448 firefighters on duty. On July 4th, the evacuation of Peeples Valley and on July 8th that of Yarnell was lifted.
Due to the tragedy, an improvement program for Fire Shelters was started in 2014 with the participation of NASA . The firefighter death site and the surrounding area were designated Granite Mountain Hotshots Memorial State Park on November 30, 2016 .
Movie
The tragedy of the Granite Mountain Hotshots was filmed by director Joseph Kosinski under the title No Way Out - Against the Flames (original title: Only the Brave ) and was released in US cinemas in October 2017 and in German cinemas in May 2018. At the center of the plot are Eric Marsh , played by Josh Brolin , and the only survivor of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, Brendan McDonough ( Miles Teller ).
literature
- My Lost Brothers: The Untold Story by the Yarnell Hill Fire's Lone Survivor by Stephan Talty
- The Fire Line: The Story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots by Fernanda Santos
Web links
- Yarnell Hill Fire Serious Accident Investigation , Final Report of the Serious Accident Investigation Team (PDF; 6.3 MB)
- List of errors that led to the disaster , International Association of Wildland Fire
- Granite Mountain Hotshots Memorial State Park , Arizona State Parks
- Yarnell Hill Recovery Group
- Fire on the Mountain , The Atlantic