On the Burning Edge (30 page)

The column of 2011’s monumentally destructive Las Conchas Fire darkens the skies above the town of Los Alamos, New Mexico. For fourteen hours straight, the megafire torched an acre of pines every 1.17 seconds. K
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A cabin threatened by the Thompson Ridge Fire in the early hours of June 5, 2013. Three weeks before Yarnell Hill, the Granite Mountain Hotshots helped save this cabin, and others like it, from burning in New Mexico’s Valles Caldera National Preserve. K
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Fully half of the nation’s air tanker fleet was fighting the Yarnell Hill Fire on June 30. Here, a specially converted DC-10 supertanker unloads eight thousand gallons of retardant. In the foreground are Granite Mountain’s buggies; the knoll in the background is Brendan “Donut” McDonough’s lookout. C
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For reasons that remain unclear, Granite Mountain left the safety of the already burned vegetation for a ranch near the town of Yarnell. Minutes before the fateful decision was made, hotshot Scott Norris texted this photo to his girlfriend, Heather Kennedy, along with the following note: “This fire is going to shit burning all over and expected +40 hr wind gusts from a t-storm outflow. Possibly going to burn some ranches and house.” S
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This photo of the smoke column was shot around 4:40
P.M
., within minutes of superintendent Eric Marsh’s last radio transmission. At this point in the day, fifty-mile-per-hour winds were stoking the Yarnell Hill Fire and the blaze had grown by approximately 2,700 acres in just forty minutes. C
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The view from an Air Attack plane circling the Yarnell Hill Fire shortly after the hotshots were burned over. The white smudge in the upper left corner of the picture is the Helms’ place. The small clearing just to the left of the wingtip is where Brendan “Donut” McDonough considered deploying his fire shelter, an aluminum blanket designed to deflect heat but not withstand direct contact with flames. C
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