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By John Dougherty
The families of 12 of the Granite Mountain Hotshots killed on June 30 in the Yarnell Hill Fire today filed notice of claims with the city of Prescott, Central Yavapai County Fire District, the Arizona Forestry Division, Yavapai County and four fire commanders seeking $237.5 million in damages.
Investigators on July 3 inspect the location where the Granite Mountain Hotshots were entrapped by flames four days earlier. (Photo: Arizona State Forestry Division)
Prescott attorney Thomas Kelly, who once served as assistant superintendent of the Prescott Hotshots, filed the claims on behalf of the families that includes several of the crew’s most experienced members including Granite Mountain Hotshot Captain Jesse Steed.
The claims name four fire commanders who were working under the state’s direction on June 30: Roy Hall, incident commander, Arizona State Forestry Division; Russ Shumate, incident commander, Arizona State Forestry Division; Todd Abel, field operations chief, Central Yavapai Fire District; and Darrell Willis, Wildlands Division Chief, Prescott Fire Department. [Read more…]
Published Wed., Dec. 11 2013 at 11:38 AM in Phoenix New Times
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| Illustration by Pat Kinsella |
A state fire supervisor asked the Granite Mountain Hotshots whether they could assist in Yarnell minutes before the 19-member crew left a burned-over safety zone along a mountain ridge and began its descent into a chaparral-choked box canyon where the men died in a firestorm.
See Also: Complete coverage of the Yarnell Hill Fire here.
The request, which was not disclosed in the Serious Accident Investigation Report commissioned by the Arizona Forestry Division (released in late September), provides important new insight into why the Granite Mountain crew decided to abandon their safe position as a powerful thunderstorm rapidly approached the wildfire raging below. [Read more…]
The Arizona Industrial Commission today released the following reports in connection with the deaths of 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots on June 30 during the Yarnell Hill Fire:
AZ Dept. of Occupational Safety and Health Agenda 12/4/13
Worksheets for Proposed Citations
Wildland Fire Associates Report
InvestigativeMedia has also attached an important essay by Ted Putnam on the impossibility of firefighters following the 10 Standards Fire Orders. Putnam’s paper written in 2000 concludes:
“Currently the fire organization is not very proactive in making safety a major
influence in strategies and tactics. Getting the job done, money and image
concerns push firefighters into taking excessive risk. What is needed
organizationally is truthful fire investigations, an honest reporting system that
tracks physical, mental, cultural and social aspects of firefighting and a
willingness to become a learning organization. If safety is ever to become No.
1 in the fire community then the fire community must be willing to spend more
time, money and effort to make it No. 1. The fire community must get beyond
its superficial practices like saying over and over again that safety is No. 1
without any true, longer-term, institutionalized commitment.”
InvestigativeMedia will have a complete report shortly.
The mother of Granite Mountain Hotshot Grant McKee who was killed with 18 other members of the Prescott, AZ-based crew in the June 30 Yarnell Hill Fire has filed a notice of claim against Yavapai County, Prescott and the state of Arizona seeking $12 million in damages.
“With the exercise of reasonable care, Grant’s death was preventable,” states the Nov. 14 notice filed by the Scottsdale, AZ law firm of Knapp & Roberts. “In fact, with the exercise of reasonable care, no member of the Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew would have died on June 30, 2013.
“Grant McKee, and 18 of his fellow crewmembers, died because the City of Prescott, Yavapai County, and the State of Arizona (the “liable public entities”) violated all 10 of the nationally recognized Standard Firefighting Orders.”
The 16-page claim is available here.
The members of the state’s Type 2 Short Team is posted here.
InvestigativeMEDIA is pleased to announce that its documentary film “Cyanide Beach” has been named “Best Educational Film” in the 2013 Yosemite International Film Festival.
The Yosemite festival awards recognition for some of the world’s finest and most visionary independent films made by many of the leading contemporary artists and creative minds working in cinema and screenwriting today.
In a release announcing the awards, Easton Stuart, Executive Director of the Yosemite International Film Festival said, “we are very fortunate to have received such a variety of quality films from all over the world. The Festival is significant in the development of fostering the talents of independent filmmakers.” [Read more…]
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| Illustration by Justin Renteria. |
Former Yarnell Fire Chief Peter Andersen sat under a tree in his front yard having his morning coffee on Sunday, June 30, when the Granite Mountain Hotshots drove past his Glen Ilah home.
“At 8:03, [their] two buggies went by,” Andersen says. “Right after they went by, the leaves started to blow. I shook my head. [The state] didn’t listen to me.”
Andersen, who resigned as Yarnell chief in 2011 after 12 years of service, was aggravated because he had warned an Arizona Forestry Division fire manager the night before that it was crucial to attack the steadily expanding fire in the hills above Yarnell at dawn, before prevailing southwesterly winds picked up about 8 in the morning. [Read more…]
The Yarnell Hill Fire Serious Accident Investigation Report was released on Sept. 28, 2013 during a press conference in Prescott, AZ.
InvestigativeMEDIA is continuing to investigate the events that led up to the deaths of 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots during the June 30 wildfire.
Videos of the entire press conference and an interview with lead investigator, Florida State Forester Jim Karels, are posted below.
Opening statements by the Serious Accident Investigation Team:
