PRESCOTT, Ariz. — Brendan McDonough was emotionally crushed when his supervisor on a Hotshot firefighting crew radioed in to say a wildfire ripping through the Arizona wilderness had forced them into emergency shelters — a last resort for firefighters.
His emotions plunged further as he heard the ringing phones that some of his fellow 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots had left in one of the unit’s vehicles. Separated from his crew by his job as a lookout, he knew what their wives, children and families didn’t: All 19 had died.
“Coming home, that was the worst feeling ever,” McDonough told ABC News in an interview aired Wednesday. “Knowing that these families would see me, but not anyone else off that crew. No one. I was the only person they’re going to see.”
The firefighters’ deaths June 30 near Yarnell, Ariz., came after the wind shifted, cutting off their escape route. It was the largest loss of life for firefighters in a single event since the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center terrorist attacks.
McDonough told the Daily Courier that he has asked himself “a million times” why he was spared. But he said he tries not to dwell on what happened that day.
“That’s not going to help anyone,” including his 2-year-old daughter, he said. “That’s not going to remember my brothers the right way.”
An investigation into the firefighters’ deaths is underway, but officials have said the crew moving on foot was aware as it changed positions that the direction of the wind pushing the fire was shifting.
Despite losing the men he considers his brothers, McDonough is certain he wants to live out his dream of firefighting.
“I wouldn’t have traded the years I spent with those men for anything in this world,” he told the Courier. “They made me the man and father I am today. How successful I am physically, emotionally, spiritually — I owe it to them.”
