Brendan McDonough speaks at the memorial service for his 19 fellow crewmembers killed on the Yarnell Hill Fire. Photo by Bill Gabbert, July 9, 2013.
The only survivor of the Granite Mountain Hotshots’ tragedy during the 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona has signed a book deal with a best-selling author. Brendan McDonough was serving as a lookout when the other 19 members of his crew were entrapped by the fire and killed.
Publisher’s Marketplace provides this teaser about the book:
Firefighter Brendan McDonough with NYT bestselling author Stephan Talty. The untold story from the lone survivor of the Yarnell Hill Fire.
A Prescott wildfire lookout who lived through the deadly Yarnell Hill blaze of 2013 signed a book deal at about the same time his sworn testimony was canceled based on concerns from his therapist that a deposition would jeopardize his treatment for post-traumatic stress.
Former Granite Mountain Hotshots member Brendan McDonough has been working with best-selling author Stephan Talty to produce a book that, according to online promotional materials, will reveal “the untold story from the lone survivor of the Yarnell Hill Fire.”
McDonough, who has retained a private attorney and an agent, barely escaped flames that killed 19 fellow hotshots June 30, 2013. Reached by phone Monday, he declined to explain why his treatment precluded sworn testimony but did not prevent participation in a book. He referred calls to his legal representative and his agent.
In an interview last week, Los Angeles-based agent Steve Fisher confirmed that a book is in the offing…
The largest remaining question about the Yarnell Hill Fire that killed 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshot crew in 2013 south of Prescott, Arizona, is why the crew left the safety of a previously burned area and hiked through unburned brush where they were overrun by the fire. Nothing in the two official reports shed any light on this important question.
An article in the April 3 edition of the Arizona Republic includes information that was previously unknown to the public. The newspaper reports that the lone survivor from the Granite Mountain Hotshots, Brendan McDonough who was serving as a lookout away from the crew during the tragedy, overheard a radio conversation between the Division Supervisor, Eric Marsh, and Jesse Steed who was temporarily serving as the Hotshots’ crew boss. Supposedly Mr. Marsh who normally was the Crew Boss or Superintendent of the crew, told Mr. Steed to have the crew leave the safety zone and to join him at a ranch.
While moving vehicles with the Blue Ridge crew, McDonough allegedly overheard radio traffic between Marsh and Steed, who was with 17 crew members atop a ridge that had burned days earlier.
In the radio call, Marsh told Steed to leave the “black,” which was safe, and join him at the ranch. Steed protested, saying such a move would be dangerous. The radio exchange turned into a dispute.
“My understanding of the argument between Eric Marsh and Jesse Steed … was that Steed did not want to go down,” Paladini said.
According to Paladini’s account, Steed objected until Marsh gave him a direct order to descend.
As the back-and-forth conversation continued, it became apparent that Steed, a U.S. Marine veteran, consented to the command to relocate the team. But he told Marsh he thought it was a bad idea.
As the article goes on to explain, there is a dispute over the accuracy of the report.
Brendan McDonough, Yarnell Hill Fire survivor, speaks in Prescott, Arizona at the July 9, 2013 memorial service for the 19 firefighters that died on the fire. Vice President Joe Biden and Arizona Governor Janice Brewer are on the left and right, respectively. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
Brendan McDonough watched from a distance as the other 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots became entrapped and died June 30, 2013 on the Yarnell Hill Fire south of Prescott, Arizona. Now, according to an article in the USA Today, he still struggles with stress-related problems. No longer a firefighter but working for the Wildland Firefighter Foundation, he wants to “create a non-profit organization to fulfill a dream of building a “healing center” in Prescott where first-responders, including troubled wildfire crews and their families, can seek treatment.”
The article’s main focus is a topic that rarely gets discussed in the world of wildland fire — the day to day psychological strains that firefighters face which are similar to those experienced by warfighters. The military has a highly developed program for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but the land management agencies, with a primary focus of growing trees, cleaning campgrounds, and managing visitors and non-native plants, have done little, effectively, to deal with a shocking suicide rate, for example.
The excellent article gives several examples of how stress is negatively affecting some of our firefighters. Below is an excerpt:
…Wildland Firefighter Foundation Executive Director Vicki Minor — Burk Minor’s mother — estimates that as many as one in four such firefighters struggle with emotional trauma.
She says her organization counted six firefighter suicides during 2013. If accurate, it suggests a rough suicide rate of 17 per 100,000, far higher than the national average and similar to the pace of these deaths in the military.
“Our government, our fire officials, the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, they’re really good at taking care of the land and they know how to fight fire,” Vicki Minor says. “They don’t know how to take care of their people.”
Federal workers get free visits to a contracted private counselor, but many firefighters complain these providers are not schooled in PTSD treatment, Vicki Minor says. “I’ve had several of these men say that they had to pay for a therapist out of their own pocket,” she says.
The Forest Service recently published pocket-sized pamphlets with tips on traumatic stress and resilience. But the guides offer nothing about where to seek help if necessary, except to cite websites from the Department of Veterans Affairs and private suicide support groups.
Forest Service Fire Management Director Harbour says the deaths of the 19 Prescott firefighters were a wake-up call on the emotional stress firefighters may incur. “How do we deal with what we carry after we go through a traumatic incident?” he asks.
He and his staff have turned to the Marine Corps for ideas about building emotional resilience in firefighters. He urged in a briefing paper to senior officials that “we have developed wonderful new tools to help physically protect firefighters. Now is the time to ‘build a better brain!'”
He and his staff have turned to the Marine Corps for ideas about building emotional resilience in firefighters. He urged in a briefing paper to senior officials that “we have developed wonderful new tools to help physically protect firefighters. Now is the time to ‘build a better brain!'”
The land management agencies should consider developing an experimental program with the Department of Veterans Affairs that would take advantage of their existing PTSD treatment facilities, such as the one at the VA Hospital in Hot Springs, South Dakota, the “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Residential Rehabilitation Program”. Send a few firefighters with PTSD symptoms to a facility such as this and then evaluate the possible benefits.
On July 7, 2013, 19 hearses carried the remains of the Granite Mountain Hotshots back to Prescott, Arizona. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
The Prescott Daily Courier spent about an hour talking with Brendan McDonough, the only member of the Granite Mountain Hotshots to survive the Yarnell Hill Fire; 19 of them died on June 30 in Arizona when they were overrun by the fire.
In these two videos, each about eight minutes long, he seems to be dealing pretty well with the life-changing tragedy he is still experiencing. In them, and in the article at the Daily Courier, he provides a few more details than were previously known about the events that occurred before the entrapment. He talked about how he got to his lookout location (he was closer to the fire than the crew), his interaction with the Blue Ridge Hotshots, the warning they received about the weather changing, and moving the crew’s vehicles to a safe spot.
In the second video he said:
There was no bad decision made. No one’s at fault for what happened. And I’ll never forget that day… I was there. I know what happened. And there’s a lot of other people that were there that knew what happened — and it was just an accident. These things happen. It’s horrible that it happened, but it happened. This isn’t the first time a storm has come over and killed multiple firefighters.
The first video is about the fire. The other is more about his personal story.
In a related story, a video at Arizona Central describes the tense relationship between the families of the Granite Mountain 19 and the City of Prescott.
Brendan McDonough, Photo courtesy of Brendan’s father, who placed the photo on his Facebook page.
The member of the Granite Mountain Hotshots who survived the Yarnell Hill Fire after 19 other firefighters on the crew were killed, was recently interviewed by ABC. In one of the first times he has spoken in detail about the fatalities, Brendan McDonough talked with ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross. It was conducted in the Granite Mountain Hotshots station house and marked the first time Mr. McDonough had been inside it since the Yarnell Hill fire.
The interview will air today, August 7 on “Good Morning America” (7:00 a.m., ET), “World News with Diane Sawyer” (6:30 p.m., ET) and in late-night on “Nightline” (12:30 a.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network.
Brendan McDonough, surviving member of the Granite Mountain Hotshots on the Yarnell Hill Fire. Photo courtesy of Brendan’s father, who placed the photo on his Facebook page.
The only member of the Granite Mountain Hotshot crew to survive the Yarnell Hill Fire has been identified as 21-year old Brendan McDonough. Contrary to earlier reports that he had been assigned to move equipment when the other 19 members of the crew became entrapped and were killed, Mr. McDonough was serving as a lookout.
The duties of a lookout on a wildland fire are to observe the fire and the weather and to notify the crew about changes that could jeopardize their safety. Typically they find a high vantage point from which they can see both the fire and the location of the other firefighters.
In a briefing Tuesday, Prescott Fire Department Public Information Officer Wade Ward said Brendan, who is in his third season with the crew, did “exactly what he was supposed to do”. When he arrived at the lookout point he identified a trigger point for himself and decided that when the fire reached that location he would have to leave for his own safety. Later in the day when the fire reached that trigger point, he radioed the crew Superintendent, telling him that the weather was changing rapidly and the direction of spread of the fire had changed because the wind direction had changed. Brendan told him that he had to leave his lookout location and that if the crew needed anything to contact him. That was his last communication with the crew, after which he walked out and met the Blue Ridge Hot Shots. He looked back and saw that the point where he had been had already burned over. He then got in the Blue Ridge Hotshots’ vehicle and was taken to a safety zone. Brendan was not injured and did not have to deploy his fire shelter.
“The wind changed,” said Prescott Fire Battalion Chief Ralph Lucas, explaining the movement of the fire. “We had a thunderstorm that was above. They have a tendency to push winds around, just because of the dynamics of nature, and that may have been what occurred during that time period, that brought fire up toward his trigger point, indicating that it was time for him to leave his lookout point.”
Mr. Ward implored the audience to protect Brendan’s privacy and to leave him alone, which precipitated applause from the crowd. Then he said, “Give him some time. And when I mean time, it’s going to take weeks, if not longer”.
