Nineteen Fire Shelters and Nineteen Deaths

The Heroic and Horrific Final Moments of the Arizona Firefighters Will Long Be Studied. What We Learn Will Save Future Lives.

“The Prarie got on fire and went with Such Violenc & Speed as to Catch a man & woman & burn them to Death, Several escaped. among other a Small boy who was Saved by getting under a green Buffalow skin….They say the grass was not burnt where the boy sat.” –William Clark, from the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804, often quoted during fire shelter training for firefighters.

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To many Americans, the news from Arizona seems foreign, darkly surreal: Nineteen elite firefighters gone, killed in a …