After the 14 wildland firefighters were killed on the South Canyon Fire in Colorado in 1994 the Wildland Firefighter Foundation commissioned a stature to be built in their honor. For years it sat outside the airport in Boise, but last year just before the memorial service for the 19 firefighters that were killed on the Yarnell Hill Fire the statue appeared in Prescott at the entrance to the arena where the service was being held. The Prescott Daily Courier published an editorial today about its travels since that day on June 30, 2013.
Here is how the article begins:
The world showed its heart to the Prescott community this past June 30, when 19 of our Granite Mountain Hotshots perished in the Yarnell Hill fire they were struggling to contain.
One of the grandest memorials arrived in Prescott within a few days of the tragedy: a statue that had greeted and bid farewell to wildland firefighters passing through the Boise, Idaho, airport, either to help fight a fire or board a plane to fly home.
This extraordinary gesture of sympathy, the Spirit of the Wildland Community statue, honoring all firefighters – past, present and future – arrived in Prescott quietly, without a lot of fanfare.
The statue – all 1,300 pounds of it – was flown from Boise in Ross Perot’s personal Boeing 737, and when the plane landed in Phoenix in hot July summer heat, Jackson Hotshots unloaded the statue by hand and helped get it to Prescott Valley, where it first stood for the memorial services for the Hotshots on July 9 at Tim’s Toyota Center, a very fitting greeting for people who attended the public farewell to the firefighters…
