It plainly states, in ways a federal report did not, what went wrong and what should have been done differently.
The document deals in steely objectivism about what happened on June 30, the day an out-of-control wildfire burst out of the rugged mountains west of Yarnell, racing over and killing the 19 young firefighters of the Granite Mountain Hotshots.
We knew from previous reports what the ill-fated Granite Mountain team did on that stormy, wind-swept day. Now, we know more about what should have happened, what protocol dictates professionals should have done. And what they failed to do.
Prepared by Wildland Fire Associates for the Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health, the report gives future firefighting teams what a previous report from the U.S. Forest Service did not: clear evidence of what forest firefighters in the field and their supervisors behind the lines should do and should avoid doing when performing their duties. This report can (and very well may) save lives.
The state investigation reflects the agency’s mission, which is worker safety. Its conclusions mirror the concerns The Arizona Republic, among other voices, has been raising since wildfire started becoming more intense more than a decade ago: The lives of forest firefighters should not be placed in jeopardy for the sake of wood and spackle.
These investigators also conclude the failure to develop a strategic plan to fight the rapidly growing Yarnell Hill fire, as well as a lack of vital resources such as a safety officer, contributed significantly to this tragedy.
Looming large among all the conclusions of the state investigation is that communication among firefighters and supervisors was spotty.
Critically, supervisors did not know the team was moving from a safe, already burned area through unburned brush en route to the safe haven of Boulder Springs Ranch.
Why they chose to leave the safety of “the black,” and why they chose the route they did (among several redeployment options) is something we will never know. But this report makes it less likely the next hotshot team deployed on the edge of a fast-moving fire will go marching through unburned brush without a clearer understanding of where the fire is and where it’s going.
The next team deployed in harm’s way also will be less likely to go into the field without adequate maps. Boulder Springs Ranch was farther away than the team realized. A proper field map may have made clear to them the visual trick the terrain played in making the ranch appear closer than it was.
Poor communications created peril in myriad ways.
Perhaps the most jarring example of poor communications came the morning of June 30 when aircraft dropped fire retardant on a backfire started by the Granite Mountain team themselves to create a perimeter.
To the end, the Granite Mountain team was in “direct attack” mode, meaning its mission was to aggressively attempt to put the fire out. The raging, fast-moving conflagration had long since grown beyond the point that direct attack by small teams of firefighters on the ground could enjoy any chance of success.
The fact the hotshots had not already redeployed closer to the urban-wildland interface at the edge of town is attributable to poor coordination prompted by worse communication.
It hurts to read about what people should have done to avoid a terrible tragedy such as this. But it simply is not sufficient to walk away, whimsically murmuring in passive voice about how “mistakes were made.”
Supervisors made a lot of right decisions when fighting that fire on Yarnell Hill. But they made too many wrong ones.
Letting them off the hook regarding the latter may make the anguish of Yarnell Hill easier to overcome, but it also makes it easier for them to learn nothing of value from it.
We owe tomorrow’s teams of hotshots, as well as the memory of the Granite Mountain hot shots, more than that.
