"I never questioned them before, why should I question them now? It's not their fault. "No, I never question the decisions they've made," he said, seated in the ready room beneath crossed axes affixed to one wall. McDonough wonders why everything turned deadly that day too - but he does not puzzle over Marsh's judgment or that of any other Hotshot. Inside the Granite Mountain Hotshots' station house in Prescott, in his first visit only weeks after the catastrophic loss, McDonough felt at ease - enough to reveal his deep pain over not being with his friends, who were all like family to him, when they died in their boots. McDonough survived simply because he'd been chosen that day for an important job - he was the crew's lookout a half mile away watching "fire behavior" and monitoring weather changes - and he was able to escape the cascade of flames shooting as high as 50 feet. that the Hotshots had deployed protective personal shelters, an Arizona state paramedic hiked up to the site of torched chaparral and confirmed the worst. on June 30, when the Yarnell Hill Fire suddenly whipped 180 degrees around and cut off their escape route from a scrub brush meadow to a nearby ranch.Īlmost two hours after it was reported at 4:47 p.m. PHOTOS: Brendan 'Donut' McDonough Watched the Roaring Fire Turn on His FriendsĮvery one of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, except for McDonough, was burned alive sometime after 4:30 p.m. Sunk into my seat, I sunk into myself," he said in the ABC News interview, finally breaking his silence over how the terrible incident unfolded, in which only he survived.
Additional portions will be broadcast tonight on "World News With Diane Sawyer" and "Nightline".īut by then the 21-year-old elite wildland firefighter - whom his fellow Hotshots affectionately called "Donut" in a play on his last name - knew the horrible truth that their own families did not yet know, as he sat in the seat absorbing the magnitude of what was happening.Īll 19 of his brother Hotshots had just been killed by the ripping Yarnell Hill blaze in the largest loss of life among firefighters since the 9/11 attacks.
"Whoever didn't bring their phone, I could hear phones ringing, knowing that it was their wives, their family," McDonough recounted in an exclusive interview with ABC News to air on "Good Morning America" today. 7, 2013 — - Five weeks after the worst day of his young life, Brendan McDonough still hears the cell phones that were ringing in the back of his fire truck, the agonizing peal of loved ones desperate to reach his 19 missing buddies in the Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew fighting a raging wildfire on a scorched Arizona mountainside.
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