Yarnell Hill Fire report

On Saturday, the Arizona State Forestry Division released the findings about the deaths of the 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots at the Yarnell Hill Fire on June 30th. The report can be found HERE

I figured I would write a blog about this because I have an opinion and the topic and it's future implications for fighting wildfires have an impact on my life as my dad and brother both are fire fighters during the summer seasons.

To start, I appreciate the care that the investigative team took to look at it in a present form instead of looking a the event retroactively. Too many times people look at events in hindsight and say that that was totally preventable because of what we know after the event occurs. However, the investigation tried to step into the crew's shoes and understand what they knew at the time and what they were seeing at the time through interviews, photos, texts, radio communications, etc.

They concluded that the decisions made were by no means out of the scope of reasonable thought and no blame or accusation was placed on anyone for what transpired. Given the timeline of events, the crew made decisions based on information that they had and that they felt were smart decisions given the circumstances. I agree.

After reading the report, I fully feel like the crew left the 'black" ("black" refers to a safe area already burned of vegetation) to do their job and help save the town of Yarnell to the best of their abilties instead of sitting around watching it burn. For a firefighter, that is your job and that's what I feel like the crew was doing. And you can't go blaming a crew for wanting to do their job and help save someone's property and potentially their life.

There were two issues that I found that should have been taken care of more specifically on the day that they died. One, some radios were not working properly to the tones of the fire frequencies. That meant that certain individuals may not have been getting the correct info or getting garbled transmissions. They had worked around it by allowing those with malfunctioning radios to use others, but still a concern as not everyone had fully functioning communications.

And number two, the decision to hike off the two track road they were on, lose sight of the front of the fire and move into an overgrown bowl of vegetation. No matter how you look at it, losing a clear line of sight on the fire is a bad decision. You have no lookout, you are knowingly walking into closed off area up hill from the fire front and very little chance of climbing out in any expeditious manner if the fire advances. Given the information from the report, the crew had no idea that the wind would shift direction again and run up into the bowl that they had climbed down into and that has to be considered. But, the decision to walk into the bowl itself is a tough one to take.

Overall, I think there are going to be a lot of lessons learned from this tragedy and I am thankful that things will improve. Overall, firefighting is incredibly safe despite the danger that can and does exist. My father has been doing it for nearly 30 years and my brother for 5 and they have never had an issue. Most stories of firefighters follow the same line of safety that my family has. It is unfortunate that reality has to strike occasionally for us to see that it is still a dangerous profession and only getting more dangerous as more urban interface grows, the climate becomes more hot and more dry and the budgets for prevention and suppression continue to shrink.

We pray for their families and all the families of firefighters who willingly decide to put themselves in harm's way for the benefit of others.

Pennies

I read a book (shocking, I know) about a year and a half ago. Don't even remember the name of it anymore, but there was always a part that stuck out in my mind.

It spoke about individuals who have chosen an object that represents the remembrance of God in their lives. For instance, one of the women chose butterflies. Every time she saw a butterfly cross her path, it was a reminder of God's loving presence in her life. There was even a story of a snow storm and the worry that comes along with bad weather and travel in those conditions when the woman saw a butterfly in the middle of the storm which helped to calm her nerves and give her the peace of God.

I remember thinking that that was a great idea. The book encouraged the reader to consider finding their own personal item that would help them remember God's continual work in our lives.

It took me months to figure something out. It's quite a bit more difficult than one might imagine. You want it to be an item that you don't normally see everyday but something that you might come across anywhere that you are. I thought about everything until I settled on pennies.

My dad has always been the guy to pick up pennies no matter where they are. Most people skip over them or intentionally throw them out because they have so little value. I learned that even a few pennies add up to a nickle and a couple nickles become a dime. I hardly ever pass up pennies when I see them on the ground and that made for a perfect object to choose to remind me of God's presence in my life. I didn't find them every day, but they hold a certain amount of value despite being so little.

The point of telling you all of that is to tell you this. Almost a year ago, I was in Phoenix at the state cyclocross champioship race. The day before was a wildly muddy race that really messed up my bike. I was stressed the morning of the championship race because my bike wasn't working perfectly and looked terrible from the mud the other day. I didn't have the cash on me to pay the race fee and had to run down the street to the convenience store to the ATM. I was running late. My water bottles weren't full. One thing after another, as insignificant as they may have been added up to being quite stressful. As I was debating even riding that day, riding to the registration table, I passed a penny on the ground. I stopped, turned around and picked it up. It was a wheat back penny.

Wheat back pennies were produced between 1909 and 1956. They are seldom found in circulation anymore because they are worth at least a few cents more than their face value. Collectors tend to scoop them out of circulation whenever they pop up. It was a find that has more significance than a normal penny laying on the ground. It reinforced that God really had the wheel. That despite my stress, it didn't matter in the scheme of things.

This morning I was out riding my bike, as I have done quite a bit since moving to Columbia 5 weeks ago, and I passed a penny on the ground. The last week has been stressful. I have been worried about a lot of things that have all just added up over the last few days on top of overcoming a cold that hit me hard this past weekend. Despite plenty of prayer to help calm my nerves and give me reassurance that everything will be fine, sometimes stress overwhelms.

A lot of times I pass up pennies that I see while riding my bike (there are more than you might think laying on the roads) because it is too dangerous to stop and pick up a penny or I am in a hurry to get where I need to go. I stopped this morning and turned around. When I got back to the penny and started to bend over I could see the backside was different than normal. Another wheat back.

Sometimes God has to speak a little more loudly when we begin to tune him out with all the stresses that clog our hearing. That penny, despite being so meaningless and having so little value, can mean so much to the person who finds it.

The rest of my ride was spent in prayer. Thankful and reassured that everything is going to be ok.