YARNELL, Ariz. — It's been 10 years since the tragic deaths of the 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots. But those men weren't alone. A second firefighting crew was also trapped in the Yarnell Hill Fire and narrowly avoided that fatal firestorm.
"About 3:30 in the afternoon this was a different story. All this was on fire," said Bob Brandon, a longtime fire chief in the area.
A decade has passed since he and his crew were trapped behind a small gate just off Yarnell Hill.
That day, Brandon was running a tender truck -- a portable tanker full of water. Brandon and his crew were cutting a firebreak to protect a local ranch. The Yarnell Hill Fire hadn't gotten bad yet.
"We were cutting a tree of firebreak because we didn't want the fire to come into the town," Brandon explained.
And for a while, it was working. The fire was moving away from them. Until suddenly, it wasn't. A massive downdraft stopped the fire in its tracks and pushed it back toward the teams on the hill.
Brandon could stand by the gate and point out the exact ridges and valleys the fire came through.
"The fire came around on that side. From there it came from west to east, then east to west, and collapsed on us in the middle."
When the downdraft hit, the column of smoke collapsed, revealing the flames heading right for Brandon's crew.
"It just came out like a giant fireball," he said. "And I told my rookie -- I said 'get down off the hill. We're getting out of here.'"
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The rookie ran. Brandon's truck stalled, and he climbed out without thinking.
"On that day, all I knew was wind and fire," he said. "I lost part of my voice box and all my sinuses, but fortunately through my training I learned, I grabbed my T-shirt and I got water on it and I pulled it up over my head. If I hadn't had done that, they said it would have burned my lungs."
Brandon was able to make it back to his truck and get it started. He drove through a day-turned-night: a sky full of smoke.
"When I left there, I still didn't know where my guys were," he said. "They ran in the bottom of the arroyo [or wash] and the fire went right over the top of them. I mean, like a sheet of fire. One of my firemen, his hair was on fire because he was ducking down and running and he didn't have his shroud on."
Miraculously, Brandon and his crew made it out. But the other crew on the hill, the Granite Mountain Hotshots, weren't so lucky. Brandon thinks it was only 90 minutes later that they were overrun by the same fire, just a few miles from his crew.
None of the 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots survived. But Brandon and his crew did.
10 years later, most of the area has recovered. Flowers and trees are growing along the road Brandon raced down to escape. Now, it's hard to see the fire scars. But Brandon knows they're still there.
"It's embedded in your mind, and it'll be there till I pass away."
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