PRESCOTT, Ariz. — Reminders of the Granite Mountain Hotshots are spread throughout Station 7.
Around the crew’s former firehouse, their pictures surround a quilt hanging on the wall, their names are inscribed on a wooden table, and the vehicles they drove to their final wildfire sit in the garage with slips of paper marking their seat assignments.
Over the past year, the station in Prescott has become a source of solace and heartache.
People have parked their cars outside, sharing stories of loss and pride in the 19 Hotshots who died June 30, 2013, in the deadliest day for U.S. fire crews since 9/11. Families have sunk into the seats of the crew’s vehicles, imagining the final ride.
The tragedy has seen the community go from an outpouring of support in the days after the deaths to animosity over survivors’ benefits to blaming fire officials for mismanaging the blaze. Through it all, the community has balanced how to mourn and honor the men with how to move forward.
“We’ll never move on,” said Darrell Willis, chief of the Prescott Fire Department’s Wildland Division. “They will always be in our mind.”
The day they died, afternoon thunderstorms and erratic winds caused a fire they were fighting near Yarnell to shift directions, turning on them and trapping them in a brush-choked canyon. They deployed their fire shelters in a last-ditch effort to save themselves.
When the crew vehicles, or buggies, returned without the men, thousands of people lined the streets of Yarnell, Prescott and surrounding communities to salute them.
Since then, the healing process hasn’t been easy.
One widow led a successful campaign to secure full survivors’ benefits. A father is trying to develop a better fire shelter. A family set up a fund to help aspiring firefighters learn the basics. Baseball scholarships are named for one of the Hotshots.
“You have to make friends with the uncomfortable feeling of missing them every day because if you don’t, it’s going to destroy you,” said Danny Parker, whose son Wade was killed in the fire. “The No. 1 thing that we believe is we’ve got to have the faith that God has a bigger plan than us.”
For Gayemarie Ekker, whose son Joe Thurston was killed, her saving grace is the support from firefighters and the community, and conversations with her daughter-in-law and two young grandsons.
“We’re all doing the best we can,” she said.
In Yarnell, where flames destroyed 127 homes, residents struggled with looters during evacuations, with displacement, with resentment that the community was being overshadowed by the firefighters’ deaths and with anger over what some viewed as a slow firefighting response.
As the first houses rose from the ashes, people saw recovery as a possibility.
“We feel the best way to honor those 19 is to make this a vibrant, alive community, and that’s what we’re doing,” said resident Chuck Tidey.
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Caught in the blaze
On June 30, 2013, gusty, hot winds blew a wildfire out of control near Yarnell, Ariz., killing 19 elite firefighters. The Hotshots, from Prescott, Ariz., deployed their fire shelters — tentlike structures meant to shield firefighters from flames and heat — when they were caught by the blaze, but the shelters were not enough to save them. It was the deadliest day for U.S. firefighters since 9/11.
