Los Angeles - A fast-moving wildfire claimed the lives of 19 US firefighters in Arizona Sunday, as the western United States suffered under a record heat wave, state officials and media said.

 

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"Reportedly, during the Yarnell Hill fire, the crew got into a catastrophic situation where sudden, fierce winds created a wave of fire which caught them in a ridge, unable to retreat to any safe zones. They attempted to deploy these shelters, but either did not have enough time, or the fire was too intense to resist. Only one of the crew of 20 survived inside his shelter, as 19 of his brothers perished."

 

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"The firefighters were members of a “hotshot” crew – the ‘Granite Mountain Hotshots’, tasked with digging a firebreak and creating an escape route. ”A hotshot crew are the elite firefighters,” state forestry spokesman Art Morrison said. “They’re usually a 20-person crew, and they’re the ones who actually go in and dig the fire line, cut the brush to make a fuel break. And so they would be as close to the fire as they felt they safely could.”

“In normal circumstances, when you’re digging fire line, you make sure you have a good escape route, and you have a safety zone set up,” Morrison said. “Evidently, their safety zone wasn’t big enough, and the fire just overtook them.”"

http://standwitharizona.com/blog/2013/06/30/who-they-were-the-granite-mountain-hotshots-19-brave-souls-who-perished-in-arizona-fire/