Arizona Wildfire Kills 19 by Magonsdaughter

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Arizona Wildfire Kills 19

POSTED BY: MAGONSDAUGHTER
UPDATED: Monday, July 1, 2013 14:51
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Monday, July 1, 2013 11:37 AM

Authorities are investigating how an elite team of 19 firefighters was overcome by an Arizona wildfire, in the worst disaster to befall US frontline wildland firefighters in 80 years.

The fire brought tragedy to two small towns in northern Arizona: Yarnell, which lost more than 200 homes, and Prescott, the hometown of the "hotshot" firefighter crew whose members were killed as they fought to contain the blaze.

"I am so sorry we come together today under these very tragic circumstances," Arizona's governor, Jan Brewer, told a press conference in Prescott.

She said the Yarnell fire had exploded into a "firestorm" that overcame even the most experienced firefighters, and pledged state assistance to fight the fire.

The men, whose average age was reported to be 22, were overtaken by a wildfire stoked by unpredictable and gusty winds and triple-digit temperatures that raged across the hills in the tiny town of Yarnell, about 80 miles north-west of Phoenix.

"Something tragically took place that only Mother Nature can explain that forced them to become casualties," Dan Fraijo, the Prescott fire chief, told a press conference.

Crews were dispatched on Monday to recover the bodies, and the identities of those killed was due to be released later in the day, officials said. Meanwhile, the fire, which has already destroyed more than 200 homes in the area, continued to burn out of control on Monday, growing more than 10 times in size to 8,374 acres.

Eighteen of the 19 firefighters were from the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a local unit attached to Prescott. It was their third major fire of the season, after fighting earlier blazes in New Mexico and Arizona.
Arizona wildfire Eighteen of the 19 victims of the Yarnell Hills wildfire were from the Prescott Granite Mountain Hotshot crew Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

State fire officials said the men had deployed their fire shelters, the last line of defence for frontline firefighters. But only some of the crew had enough time to enter the the shelters, made from layers of aluminium foil, silica and glass fibre.

"We're devastated," the Prescott fire chief, Dan Fraijo, told reporters. "We just lost 19 of the finest people you'll ever meet." The lone survivor on the crew had been deployed at a distance of about a mile away, officials said.

Carrie Dennett, an Arizona forestry official, said the last contact with the crew came at 4.50pm local time on Sunday, when they radioed they had set up their fire shelters. Such shelters typically take 20 seconds to 30 seconds to deploy – critical seconds for fighters who may become engulfed by a sudden gust of wind or flame.

Fire shelters have been known to save lives, but fire experts said their effectiveness depends on being deployed in an area clear of brush.

Hotshot teams, such as those killed on Sunday, as a rule re-train in deploying their shelters at the start of each fire season. It was several hours before a helicopter managed to fly over the area. "It was too hot and smokey," Dennett said.

While the exact circumstances of the firefighters' deaths remained under investigation, fire officials pointed to a number of likely factors – starting with the sudden shifts in wind direction, caused by passing thunderstorms across northern Arizona on Sunday. "We had some really erratic behaviour yesterday that caused the death of the firefighters up on the hill," said Arizona state forestry spokesman Mike Reichling at a news conference on Monday. "The weather has really caused havoc."

The fire was the deadliest single episode for wildfire crews since 25 were killed in Los Angeles in 1933. The only greater loss of life for US firefighters came when 343 were killed on 9/11.

Tributes for the crew came in from Barack Obama, and national and state leaders. "They were heroes – highly-skilled professionals who, like so many across our country do every day, selflessly put themselves in harm's way to protect the lives and property of fellow citizens they would never meet," said Obama, who was travelling in Africa when he was told of the disaster.

Brewer said the loss was "unbearable". She said: "We can never fully repay their sacrifice." Flags were at half-mast throughout the state, and she was due to tour the area later on Monday.

The Yarnell Hill fire was ignited by a lightning strike on Friday night, but it has been fuelled by gusty and unpredictable winds that typically accompany the seasonal thunderstorms. Monday's forecast also suggested a high chance of thunderstorms that could further compromise efforts to contain the fire, officials said. About 200 firefighters were fighting the fire on Monday, but officials hoped to deploy up to 400, reinforced with airtankers.

In the case of the 19 firefighters, there were early indications the system of thunderstorms that swept across northern Arizona on Sunday also produced a radical change in wind direction.

That would have put the hotshot crew in an extremely dangerous position, said Bill Gabbert, a former hotshot firefighter, and South Dakota fire official who now runs the Wildfire Today blog. "The wind direction shifted 180 degrees," Gabbert said. "That would put firefighters in a bad spot. The wind had been blowing from the south, south-west, and then suddenly within an hour it switched around to the north, northeast."

The wind also picked up force, Gabbert said. "It was blowing at 22 to 26 miles per hour, and then after the wind direction changed it was gusting up to 43 miles per hour," he said.

Firefighters have also been confronting extremely hot temperatures – 103 degrees Fahrenheit (40C) – and relatively low humidity of 14%.

However, Gabbert said that in the arid south-west, which has undergone several years of drought, that was not considered extremely low humidity.

"The wind is the key here. At approximately the time of the accident that wind was gusting up to 43 miles per hour, which is totally impossible for any firefighter to deal with," Gabbert said. "The fire was spreading so quickly there was no way any firefighter on the ground or on the air, could have put it out. The fire was just spreading too quickly."

The Guardian

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Monday, July 1, 2013 2:51 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

seems to be bigger news here than in the US.

Maybe we understand what this is like.

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