Cooper: It was almost like a switch was flipped. Hipke: The cold front winds travel up the
Colorado River drainage. As the canyon narrows, the winds are compressed and accelerated and
flow up the west drainage. Petrilli: We could see further down at the
bottom of the canyon, uh a spot fire taking off. The wind had just turned on that fire,
ya know, within a matter of seconds. Uh whatever was down there, ya know, sparked off across
the canyon and uh you could definitely see it. Wind was on it, it was pushing it, it
was going to get big. There was no doubt about it. Ya know, we all said, ya know, hey weíre
out of here. Um I called Mackey on the radio as we were making our way back to the lunch
spot. Itís like hey this thing has spotted across the canyon and uh ya know, we wanted
to double check itís like a ya know, what canyon? And I came back and said yeah, it
spotted across the main canyon. And I turned around and looked at it one more time and
it had progressed, I donít know, probably 50 yards in a matter of, ya know, 10-15 seconds.
Um, it definitely the wind was on it. So I replied back to him yeah it spotted across
the main canyon and itís rolling. Doehring: Heading up towards that ridge thatís
when we met Sonny Archeleta coming down to join us. And I could hear the radio traffic,
ya know, I could hear Don say ya know we need to get out of here. And uh, we started going
back up. Not too much of a sense of urgency, but somewhat, but then we turned around and
looked and just started seeing this smoke was boiling up and could hear Don saying we
gotta get out of here now now. Shepard: Kelso called and said thereís a
spot down below. I immediately said, John get out of there. Come back up here to the
top. OK, affirmative. I called Scholz and I said get your crew up H1. Get em to the
safety zone at H1. Scholz: He said to uh head to uh H1 the safety
zone and we all lined out. We had the other the BLM folks here with us and we started
marching up the ridge. Robertson: Um, I wasnít aware why why we
were doing that. I knew the wind was blowing but I didnít know uh, what exactly was happening.
I did notice the column that was down in the west drainage. Just knew that I had to load
up and go as ordered. Hipke: Kept hiking along and and the first
jumper I ran into was Jim Thrash and he was right by Jerry Hagen and they were just finishing
up their lunch. Thatís when Roger Roth walked up long-arming two five gallon cubies and
at the same time we noticed uh our attention was brought to this column that was down the
drainage. And the way the topography rolls around here, in fact, you canít even see
the lunch spot right through here. And we couldnít see the base of the column, but
you could sure see the column rising in here. And for us, to head back to the lunch spot,
it would have been walking directly towards the column. Ya know, itís just natural to
go out the way you came in. We didnít know what was past that lunch spot really at all.
So, we walked we walked directly away from the danger and the rest of the Prineville
followed behind us. Petrilli: I was at the tail end of our little
uh jumper squad um making our way back to the lunch spot. Ran into Mackey, uh, ya know,
heís directing us, ya know, go up the ridge go up the ridge, thereís good black up there.
Um, in later discussions with some of the jumpers in my group was uh ya know, in my
mind I was going to be going up the ridge into the black, but in a couple of the other
guysí their mind was to go back down the fireline that we had just built so. Mackey
was there to make sure that everybody going up the ridge uh to the good black, ya know,
itís uh, ya know, that was good deal. You didnít you didnít have to stay there and
and make sure ya know, we knew the right place to go and uh you didnít have to do that.
And who knows, me being at the tail end, I had my idea, but what happens if some guys
start bailing off down the line. What ya know, I thought about that since then, ya know.
Guys are bailing down towards the fireline. My idea was to head up the ridge. Would I
have followed them down the fireline? I could have. I donít know, I donít know. Iím glad
I wasnít faced with that decision. Longanecker: Mackey had called me on the radio
and asked me if I was OK. I think thatís when he started going down to make sure that
all of Prineville got out. Doehring: Boogied up the line and ran into
uh the sawyer and the swamper at the tree. We stopped and said hey did you guys hear
weíre supposed to get out of here and by this time things were really boiling up and
they hadnít heard it cuz they were running saw and swamper was throwing brush. And so
we stood there for a few moments and uh at this point Iím like Iím ready to get out
of here and uh myself and Sonny started to continue up the line and the swamper was with
us. Sonny was ahead of me and I just remember more and more a sense of urgency of getting
out of there and I felt like pushing Sonny. Erickson: Brad Hagh and I sit there and weíre
talking back and forth and uh talking about the oak brush. And he says oh yeah, this stuff
is really volatile. Ya know, til then I didnít. Thatís green brush. Green brush that wasnít
burning. Hipke: Started getting further along the line
and were able to glimpse over the 12-foot tall brush and get some glances down into
the canyon. Could see that the fire is now marching its way up towards us and every little
glimpse I got, I couldnít believe how much further the fire advanced. Itís just hard
to comprehend that itís moving that fast. Itís like moving through gasoline. It was
just a wall of smoke and flame and I realized later that we were looking at the side of
the column. Itís just a massive column that to me just looked like a wall coming at us
and thatís when we really as soon as we saw that thatís when we were moving moving as
fast as we could. And the line was freshly dug, roots everywhere, stabs stuck cut off
from the brush, thereís just like pongee sticks. Ya know, everybody took their turns,
stumbling and falling and holding the rest of the line up and you just kinda get the
accordion thing going on. We passed the stump and our group stacks up
as we climb while crossing the spur ridge. Roth in front. Thrash second. I was third.
Terry Hagan was forth with the rest of the Prineville Hotshots behind us. And through
here that I noticed I took a glimpse back and noticed that Don Mackey had caught up
with the group. We had just locked gazes and he was breathing really hard and this grimace
of concern and itís a look Iíll never forget. Driven by the wind and slope, fire now has
enough energy to ignite the oak brush and races through the unburned and underburned
canopy toward the main ridge. Gray: We start moving up the ridge and itís,
itís an organized movement. Weíre all together. Thereís a sense of urgency, but weíre not
running for our lives so to speak. And we get up to there where the rocks are and itís
quite obvious to the folks in the front of the group that weíre not going to make it
to the safety zone. That the fire is there. It has beat us there.
Robertson: Get up to these rocks. Um Kim gets a, what Iím assuming is a radio call. I remember
stepping up on a rock and all of a sudden Kim turned around and was facing me and passing
me heading down the hill. I turn around and look down the hill and see everybody, the
back of everybodyís hardhats, retreating off the ridge. Both our crew and the IA crew
that was with us. At this time I still have my ear plugs in. Iím not exactly sure whatís
going on other than uh seeing seeing the looks on folkís faces. Um, but uh at that point
thatís when fire starts coming up over the top of the ridge and I figure out fairly quickly
whatís whatís happening. Gray: Thereís flames beginning to curl over
that ridge. And thereís thereís still people running out of there.
Ryerson: I remember running back down the ridgeline and the heat was so intense that
ya know, I have my hand on my side of the face just to keep the heat off.
Scholz: And at that point it it was chaos. Uh, it was loud, it was hot, uh. Folks were
stumbling back down, uh. The group was breaking up.
Gray: Weíre ordered to pull shelters so we do as we come down that ridge. Pull shelters
weíre running with them in our hands. Scholz: When I look back and I saw I saw Alex
and it looked like he was a surfer coming out of a wave ya know, he was coming down
the ridge with this big curl. Hipke: This is the uh draw at the bottom of
the final 400 feet before the top and itís right here where Thrash stepped off to the
side and weíre just breathing really hard, almost out of breath. And he only had enough
breath to go shelter, like that and uh, when he said that Roth stepped off to the other
side to hear what he said and for me that was like uh, ya know, to slow cars pulling
off on the road. They werenít quite going as fast as I wanted to go. I didnít know
if either Thrash and Roth and that probably saved me cuz within a couple couple of NTSB
jumpers I might have stopped. And investigators told me that the rates of spread they figured
out that if I had been uh five seconds slower, than I might not have made it out. So if I
had, ya know, stopped and said hey I donít think uh Iím not gonna shelter up, Iím gonna
keep going uh that. Ya know, I didnít even have the breath to say that. So I just kept
going. Erickson: And then a spot come across underneath
ya and thatís when I got on the radio and said hey you guys got a spot below you, you
better get the hell out of there. And then that spot went to the size of a house just
immediately, there was enough air on it to blow it up.
Doehring: We got to the top of the ridge, myself and Sonny, and thatís when uh we looked
over again and saw what was going on. And thatís when he asked me for my camera, asked
if I had a camera and I was like yeah. So I pulled out my camera and gave it to him
and he took a couple of shots. And uh gave me back the camera. I took a couple of shots
with him, his his back of his head is helmet in the foreground with flames in the back
and then I took that camera and I stuck it down my shirt cuz I didnít wanna mess around
with my PG bag and I said I, Iím getting out of here. It was sort of a, ya know, fight
of flight and I was into the flight. And uh, I headed out of there.
Hipke: I made it this far, I could hear Kevin Erickson and Brad Hagh yelling at us from
the tree up there and I stopped for just a second to look back and I was looking right
into Roger Rothís eyes. Heís about 50 feet behind me uh with everybody coming up behind
him. And 50 feet is starting to make a lot of a lot of time, itís getting steeper and
steeper here. Erickson: About that time, Brad Haghís like
hey I think Iím gonna get out of here. I kept yelling and uh and then I thought OK
hey, the entire hillside is just full, it was fire just fire everywhere. And I could
see the crew right below me, but anyway I take up walking as hard as I can up through
there and just take off running cuz you could hear it, ya know, it was taking off like a
jet. Hipke: I just immediately started blasting
up the hill. I donít remember seeing anybody after that. I was justÖMy world was just
closing in it just was exactly around me. It gets so steep, youíre almost reaching
out and using your hands to get up the slope. Robertson: People were spread everywhere.
They were spread all along this ridge. Different colored hard hats all over the place. I never
had the thought of getting my shelter out. It took me long enough just to drop my saw.
Ya know, my chainsaw had a name, it was it was my tool, and I cared for it a lot and
I never thought about putting it down, but eventually um I saw a stack of Domars and
a stack of chainsaws and I dropped mine there. Shepard: I run across our our personal gear
bags and shoveled them over into this depression thinking OK, there in a little bit of a hole
theyíll just be OK. Tyler and Browning, the helitack guys, came over and helped me do
that. Hipke: Shepard leaves H2 and joins a fleeing
mean ridge group as they were forced into the east drainage by the heat and embers from
the advancing flame front. Shepard: I look back and here is Tyler and
Browning back up toward H2 right above the lip of east draw. And Blanco and I are both
waving them this way, come on come on. And they saw us and they turned around and went
up the ridge, disappeared into the into the oak.
14:32 Erickson: Headed up to the top and I remember
hitting the top getting burned pretty good and as I crested over the top, Brad Hagh is
right in front of me and uh he runs right into a tree just wide open, full on, hits
his head and it bounces him back and he gets back up and we slide down through a rock slide.
Hipke: Along this final hundred feet to the top, the heat was getting unbearable. I donít
remember carrying my Pulaski. I donít remember dropping it. Uh, but they thought my Pulaski
hit about 87 feet from the top. Thatís when must have been getting so hot that I must
of started shielding my uh face and my ears. And it dark red little cinder whirls were
zipping by me, little gusts. The only thing Iíd ever thought Iíd use my shelter for
was to shield as the old style shelter. So I I kept hiking along and was getting the
shelter out and ended up fumbling it and dropping it. And the heat was so bad, I donít remember
exactly itís kinda a little fuzzy but itís like I tripped I was jumping to get away from
the heat and it felt all the world to me as I was doing that like like a wave hit me.
Itís like being at the being at the beach and not paying attention ya know, standing
with your back to the ocean and a wave comes and just knocks you down. And so I ended up
on the ground as uh screaming like a little girl. Exhaling. And the investigator told
me that the air had been that knocked me down had been super-heated. Uh thatís what saved
my lungs from getting fried. I got immediately got back up and my hardhat was off and got
knocked off, my pack, scrapped it or melted off or part of the straps had slipped off.
I was waddling up and I just punched my pack lose and I just ran over to the top.
Robertson: The fire was coming over the ridge, over the top of us. As we made it off the
lee side to protect ourselves from that, but we didnít really know where to go. Then thatís
when uh Louie yelled at me to take your ear plugs out and thatís the first time that
I got my ear plugs out from in my saw. Things become a little bit more apparent. The sound
of the fire. The sound of of our Domars and the chainsaws blowing up as as the fire came
over the ridge on um that all that all became very real.
Gray: After I bailed off here, go down there just a little ways I could hear my foreman,
Bryan Scholz, and heís yelling what I think heís yelling my name. Heís yelling Kiiiiiiiiiip!
So I stopped like did I just really hear that. And he yells it again and yeah, I definitely
heard it. So, I move back up the slope a little ways and Iím thinking to myself, I donít
really wanna go up there. Man, did Scholz fall and brake his leg, I mean something,
why is he hollering my name. Scholz: I ran into uh one of my folks that
had stopped moving. Gray: I scribble up through a couple of trees
and I can look up the slope just a little ways and I can see Bryan Scholz and heís
actually yelling Kim. Heís yelling Kimís name. It just sounded like Kip uh heís heís
doing his best job to keep continuing to motivate her down.
Scholz: So I had to get a little feisty with her and tap her on the hardhat a couple of
times to get her going. Gray: As Iím standing down there looking
at Bryan and Kim I see Eric Hipke um come out. He had come out that west flank line
and uh, and he was just barreling down the slope there. His skin was burned off his hands
and hanging down and uh he he literally was still smoking. It it justÖ I just couldnít
really fathom what I was seeing at that second. Hipke: And I was just taking these 10-foot
bounding strides, tripping and falling, rolling, getting back up again, rolling down. Felt
great not fighting gravity anymore. And just making a lot of distance, and no heat. Made
it 200 feet down when I ran into Kevin Erickson and Brad Hagh.
Erickson: Weíre kinda gathering our wits and uh weíre just right over the crest at
the hill and Iím like holy cow, those guys didnít make it. And uh, it was probably of
maybe a minute later we see you coming down and uh you donít look very good. And thatís
an understatement. The the the heat and the orange and the stuff thatís coming over the
top of us. Hipke: Weíre looking up at these hundred
foot flame lengths just blasting over over the ridgetop waiting for somebody else to
come over for just a bit and weíre talking a bunch and weíre like whereís the rest,
saying things like uh maybe they sheltered or took an indirect way. And then there are
spot fires starting all around us. And so we moved down another couple hundred feet.
Erickson: And I remember I did not want to go down into that next drainage at all. I
did not want to go down in there. Hipke: Thank God Brad Hagh was with us because
he had hiked up that that gully of the east drainage twice and so he knew it was a safe
way out, but for us looking at it, we just see how fast the fire raced up that the west
drainage. Here we are in the east drainage and the wind blowing up that also. The columns
leaning leaning over and cinders dropping all over and we I just thought weíre just
walking into a death trap. And can we even get out that way and Brad Hagh reassured us
that is the only way out. Scholz: Circled around below the ridge here
and ran into some of the BLM folks. Ran into Tom Shepard. And uh I was pretty adamant at
that point uh it was time to go. And uh it was it was, um, a difficult decision to go
down into the place that was very likely going to burn up in a few minutes. But there was
really no other alternative. Ryerson: My folks were pretty scattered out
and ya know, Laura Paulson was with me and I could see a couple of our folks down in
front of us. So ya know, and then when I got the call from Butch saying go ahead and head
down the east drainage then we started ya know, yelling that out.
Robertson: Somehow through all of that uh trying to figure out how to get down this
steep ground and dissected uh bridges down into the bottom, I became separated from everybody.
And I remember crewmembers yelling at each other across the canyon.
Scholz: Figure out where folks are. Figure out everybody going in the right direction.
Whoís at the bottom. Do they have a radio. Make contact. Ok are we good down there. Somebodyís
with a local, but, but for a few minutes there itís itís disturbing that your folks are
out there and you donít know where theyíre at.
Gray: I basically stayed with the group of guys that that I scrambled up across the east
drainage and got up on the little bench with. As I came down further, one of them was still
scrambling up that little scree slope right there. And uh two of them were already up
there so I followed suite cuz it was it was kinda a eerie feeling down in there in that
steep little canyon. You canít see anything so uh. I scurried up there as well and uh,
once we were up there we were able to look down the canyon just a little bit and and
put together that it was safe to proceed. Tom Shepard and what I believe was the incident
commander, Blanco, came right down the bottom. Shepard: I looked up and my thought was oh
geez, good. Thatís smart thinking. Theyíre getting up. They can see around this corner
uh down down canyon and uh, they can act as lookouts. There was no anything coming up
there. Like it would do us any good anyway. Gray: I do remember Tom Shepard hollering,
looking up at us and hollering, saying come on down this way and right out this drainage.
Shepard: They moved on down uh along with the rest of the crew and I stumbled along
the rear just, numb with grief. Overcome with the terrible sadness. Itís like I just felt
in my heart that I lost that part of my crew. Nine people. That were down of the, down on
the west fireline. Hipke: On the lunch spot ridge, Longanecker
hikes back to the lunch spot while the others are hiking up towards H1.
Longanecker: Head back towards the lunch spot cuz to me thatís the safest spot to be. There
was pinyon and juniper trees that had burned out and there was basically nothing below
them. Ya know, so I just kinda hung out in that area.
Petrilli: Running up the ridge, there was PJ, rocks , brush, ya know, so it wasnít
just a clear shot, it was definitely picking your way.
Cooper: The eerie orange atmosphere and the roar of the fire. Itís really almost a surrealistic
experience to be that close to a large fire and be underneath the smoke column like that.
Definitely the wind was pushing ash, pushing dust, uh, embers around. By then weíre all
panicking. By then Iím really freaking myself. Iím running up hill as fast as I can. I held
on to all of my equipment. I think thatís just a subconscious thing you do.
Petrilli: You know what, I donít need this saw anymore. Itís slowing me down. I give
it a toss. Um, ya know and and itís you remember still, ya know, as I tossed that saw off my
shoulder, itís like oh, I just tossed my saw.
Cooper: And people were trying to stay together, ay know, loosely, but you get down to a point
in your mind where your life is in danger and you start to react about saving your life.
Itís not like you donít care about other people, but it gets to a decision point where
instinct takes over and you wanna live. Petrilli: Keith uh Woods and uh Sonny Soto
started, ya know, cramping up, ya know. Come on, come on, come on, we gotta go, we gotta
go. Cooper: And uh we got up to where we pretty
much ran out of steam. We were totally exhausted, out of breath and uh, nowhere else to go.
And it just happened to be the most bare, clean spot on the finger ridge.
Petrilli: Theyíre starting to gather up up there and Keith and Sonny are starting to
fall behind. Itís like come on you guys, you know, you know, just a little bit further.
Cooper: Felliciono didnít even take two seconds. He instantly started raking the spot for a
shelter. Iím looking around at the density of the fuel. I looked at the Missoula jumpers
and said, hey guys I think we need to get in our fire shelters.
Petrilli: As I came upon the uh the group of uh jumpers they had already started deploying
their fire shelters. Cooper: And from about eight inches down,
six inches down, every leaf, the dust, the soot. Anything lose was getting sucked into
the fire like a giant vacuum cleaner. It made it more difficult to get into your shelter.
You didnít just flop it open like a nice, lose blanket like the training video and crawl
into the thing. Itís stringing out from you like a flag in the wind and as youíre trying
to open this thing, I mean, itís just flapping crazy. Ya know, wildly in the wind and uh,
like I said, one lose grip and you would have lost it. Um, so some people were actually
fumbling with their shelters and starting to mentally shut down between the noise, the
confusion and the panic. And, ya know, the psychological fact that youíre actually going
to crawl into this thing as a last resort. Itís almost like crawling into your coffin
to see if it fits. Ya know, before you get your burial. Um, pretty strange psychological
feeling that youíre committing, ya know, your last hope to this piece of tin foil.
Petrilli: No major flaming fronts or burning impacting us but there were a few, ya know,
ember showers blowing through blowing under your shelter, ya know, you could definitely
hear it coming. Cooper: The thing that caused me the most
alarm while I was in my shelter was trying to breath. Um, it got so smoky even inside
the shelter that I was choking on my own snot. I could not stop from the mucus just pouring
out of my face. I was constantly spitting and spitting and my eyes were so watery I
could barely see and I kept my corners of my shelters tight, um, but it was getting
to the point where I was afraid I would pass out from lack of oxygen and then lose my grip
on my shelter and my shelter would get blown away.
Petrilli: I called Mackey and Iím telling him hey weíre deploying shelters and I donít
remember him replying. Um, I donít remember him replying.
Scholz: And all the way down, I was calling John Kelso.
Shepard: No response. I kept calling. Got no response.
Erickson: That it was uh, a weird feeling seeing these folks coming in off the side
drainages on both sides. And and they were in shock. Maybe I looked just like they did,
but they were zombies walking, and uh big eyes, and uh that was a really scary, ya know.
I knew somebody didnít make it. I didnít know who, but I knew some folks didnít make
it. Shepard: We headed on down the east canyon
and all the time, thinking, wow weíre gonna get met with a huge wall of flame coming up
at any point at any turn down this draw. Robertson: And once you get into the bottom
of it, thereís thereís many places where uh thereís actually no place to get out because
itís so steep and cliffy and um. And so youíre youíre really committed once you get off
that drainage and that was a very uneasy feeling. Youíve got wind in your face. Youíve got,
youíve got spot fires on your side. And you have no way of getting out of it until it
ends. Gray: There was peopleís gear scattered around
through here. Thereís people dropping their packs and just keeping their shelters.
Hipke: Iím stumbling, Iím starting to get shock here with the wounds drying and theyíre
helping me over rocks. Robertson: Thereís rock faces that uh are
essentially probably little water falls when waters going over them. I encountered a number
of those on my way down. Every time I walked up to one of those I wasnít sure if I was
going to be able to get through it, get over it, especially when you hit that bottom one
and you walk up and it just drops off and looking around to figure out how youíre going
to get down there without hurting yourself. All of them were luckily, traversable, you
could get around them. You have to pick your way and theyíre, itís not easy. It wasnít
just walking down a drainage, it was scrambling and rock climbing.
Scholz: You come around the bend and suddenly you can see the freeway. Hear the cars and
pop out into the sunlight, out from under the column and uh you know youíre going to
make it. Doehring: Tooke a picture of Derek along one
of those dry waterfalls, rock deals cuz at that point you could see the highway and weíre
like, alright we made it. Tooka picture. We were pretty thankful.
Hipke: We finally made it to the highway and itís the off ramp right there after the South
Canyon off ramp. Ya know, cars zipping by at 70 miles an hour.
Erickson: Sarah was the first one other than our group that I recognized. And I mean the
hug she gave me was almost broken in half and uh, that was a relief, ya know, there
was also that, ya know, that other folks probably didnít make.
Doehring: And Kevin was walking around and I realized that he had gotten burned on the
back of his neck. And yeah, he was kinda pacing around and I was like maybe you should get
looked at, too. Erickson: Jump in the ambulance with you and
road back in. Ryerson: Limited information where everybody
was at. I was assuming that the folks on the west side had ya know, hiked out on the west
drainage. Shepard: There was a radio transmission that
from up Canyon Creek Estates and somebody was saying hey I see fire shelters across
the way, ya know. And I got my hopes up. Going maybe they made it.
Hipke: Thirty minutes after the final person makes it to the freeway, the fire burns out
the east drainage. Tom Shepard, Bryan Scholz, Sarah Doehring and Sonny Archuleta get rides
back to Canyon Creek Estates where they meet up with 30 smokejumpers recently bused in
from Grand Junction. Doehring: So thereís a lot of people there
and uh, yeah, theyíre making calls, theyíre asking us when was the last time we saw them
and ya know, the fire was just ripping at that point and eventually the smoke kinda
cleared. Shepard: Sure enough, you could see a cluster
of fire shelters over there and it turned out to be the smokejumpers that were down
on the west fire. So my heart sank once again. Cooper: I do recall a retardant plane coming
over and the fire had been dying down. We were pretty much staying inside our shelters
cuz the smoke was so bad. The actual threat of flames had passed.
The wind was really. Iím sure it was terribly rough flying. They uh second drop was almost
eye-level, ya know, or below us but the wind blew that retardant right into us. Making
radio calls, trying to get a head count. Whoís where, whoís on the fire, ya know, and where
are they. Doehring: They said there was definitely denial
in my mind, ya know, where everybody was and ya know, even though once Tony did his head
count and we knew who was with him and once they came back and there was still some missing
folks itís like, oh this canít be happening. They gotta be somewhere, you know. Weíll
hear from them soon. Erickson: Stuff was burned out and starting
to cool down and not as much smoke so I figured I would go up to see what, how those guys
were doing. Cooper: As the smoke cleared, we got out of
our shelters. We checked everybody. Petrilli: We were trying to come up with a
plan, ya know, knowing that we were missing missing firefighters out there.
Cooper: Could look across the gutted out basin of brush that had burned up during the blow
up and I could see what looked like a high impact cargo chute billowing in the wind.
Petrilli: We just started, ya know, hiking over to that to that area and, ya know, thatís
when the, ya know, uh, fatalities. Cooper: And that was, of course, extremely
grim moment for everybody there. Petrilli: We came up on the lower crew um,
of the of firefighters and, ya know, I I was the guy that was talking on the radio so I
think I was communicating with the helicopter pilot. He was out searching uh through the
air and uh, um, ya know, I told him itís like we found uh, some uh, some of the firefighters.
Um and uh we came back and asked, ya know, do we need medical. And itís like uh, what
do you say. Um, ya know, I didnít know what to say. So I just said yeah, ya know, itís
too late for that. UmÖ Shepard: Tony replied back itís too late.
And, yeah. We, we lost it. Scholz took off down the road um. I was just heart broken,
just sick. Um. Tom Fitzpatrick um a jumper from Redmond that I knew just happened to
be standing next to me, we shared an embrace. We hugged and I just started wandering around.
Petrilli: Walking up the uh hill, finding the second group.
Cooper: Ya know, I walked up to Jim Thrash was the first one I walked up on. And uh,
I recognized him right away and uh. Ya know, when youíre in that state of mind, youíre
not thinking real clearly and I was first thing thought that came to my mind was oh
my God, how am I going to tell Holly. Ya know, I didnít think about well, some Forest Service
official will go to her home or whatever. For some reason Iím thinking I found him,
Iím going to have to be the one to tell her. And I was thinking what am I going to say,
what am I going to do. Petrilli: Walking further up the hill, um
finding uh, it was it was Scott Blecha, ya know, it was, that was hard. That was hard
to see that guy. He was close. He was close. Doehring: They were going to go up and do
search and rescue and asked if I wanted to go cuz Iíd been up there, I knew the area
and at that time I was like, not me. Canít do it. And but I believe Sonny got in the
helicopter and went up there again and I just couldnít. Iíd seen enough. Iím not going
up there. Cooper: And weíre standing up there at the
top of the hill with not so much of a twig left that hasnít been consumed. Hereís this
like four-foot snake that somehow lived through the fire, probably went underground, and had
came back out. Sort of a weird twist to the very end of the fire to see this, ya know,
snake, ya know, sign of evil, slithering through the burned brush. And it was uh, after that
it was a helicopter ride off the hill and going through everything else that people
go through. Hipke: It was not until two days later before
they found the bodies of Rich Tyler and Rob Browning in a gully at the head of the west
drainage. Their view from H2 would have been of the
fire racing up towards H1, sweeping its way towards them, with the prevailing wind driving
it into the east drainage while the rest of us were forced down the uninviting east drainage.
Tyler and Browning had a bit more time to move along the ridge away from the advancing
fire before heading towards bare ground, with flight helmets in hand, presumably hoping
for helicopter pickup. With the brush obscuring their view, what they couldnít see was the
50-feet deep gully in their path, where they got trapped as the full force of the fire
hit them. Shepard: As far as healing and recovery, itís
interminable task it seems like to get back to where you wanna be in your mind and itís
taken me forever. This long to to, ya know, talk about it. It took 15 years for me before
I went back and I walked up that hill. I walked that last fireline. Didnít know how I was
going to react to that. Needless to say, it was an emotional, emotional time for me. But
Iím glad I did that cuz that helped. Todayís firefighter has I think a much greater safety
awareness. If they see something they donít understand or see something that they think
is out of whack, theyíre encouraged, today, to speak up, ask about it and ya know, it
takes, it takes 20 people to run a hotshot crew. Not just one it takes 20 and and every
voice is important and there just could be something that someone misses along the way
that the newest recruit notices and brings to the supervisorís attention and and saving
some lives. SoÖ Thatís where Iím at today. Everybodyís got a voice.