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A wildfire near Yarnell, Arizona has claimed the lives of 19
firefighters from Prescott Fire Station #7 in a tragedy that has
captured attention from over the world.
The wildfire, considered the deadliest in state history, began
Friday near Yarnell, apparently because of lightning strikes.
The fire still wasn't contained
on Monday morning, and about 200 homes and other structures have
burned in the area of Yarnell, a community of about 600 people, the
state forestry division said.
From CNN -- They were part of an elite squad confronting wildfires on the
front line, setting up barriers to stop the spreading destruction. But
in their unpredictable world, it doesn't take much to turn a situation
deadly.
In this case, a wind shift and other factors caused a central Arizona
fire, which now spans 8,400 acres, to become erratic, said Mike
Reichling, Arizona State Forestry Division spokesman.
Though the deaths are under investigation, the inferno appears to have
proved too much, even for the shelters the 19 firefighters carried as a
last-ditch survival tool.
"The fuels were very dry, the relative humidity was low, the wind was
coming out of the south. It turned around on us because of monsoon
action," Reichling told CNN affiliate KNXV. "That's what caused the
deaths.
The firefighters -- members of the Prescott Fire Department's Granite
Mountain Hotshots -- were killed Sunday while fighting the Yarnell Hill
fire, northwest of Phoenix. Among the dead was Eric Marsh, the unit's
43-year-old superintendent.
Honoring the fallen
Also killed, according to the city of Prescott: Andrew Ashcraft, 29;
Robert Caldwell, 23; Travis Carter, 31; Dustin Deford, 24; Christopher
MacKenzie, 30; Grant McKee, 21; Sean Misner, 26; Scott Norris, 28; Wade
Parker, 22; John Percin, 24; Anthony Rose, 23; Jesse Steed, 36; Joe
Thurston, 32; Travis Turbyfill, 27; William Warneke, 25; Clayton
Whitted, 28; Kevin Woyjeck, 21; and Garret Zuppiger, 27.
The GCP event was set for 23:00 June 30 to 05:00 July 1 (GMT). This 6
hour period begins with the recognition of an extreme emergency by the
hotshot crew and communications that they would need to deploy their
shelters. The world quickly learned of the tragedy and shared in the
shock and dismay. The result for the GCP formal event was Chisquare
21438 on 21600 df, for p = 0.781 and Z = -0.777.
The first two hours of the graph showing GCP data show a powerful
negative deviation that by itself would be statistically significant.
It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny
statistical effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish
signal from noise. This means that every "success" might be
largely driven by chance, and every "null" might include a real
signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can
be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of
similar analyses.
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