Special Men,Heroes !
- Granite Mountain Hotshots team leader Eric Marsh radioed through to let his commanders know the group had a predetermined safety zone and then again to say they were deploying their emergency shelters
- Fire department officials said, despite the frightening situation, Marsh was 'calm, cool, and collected'
- The men were fighting to save a subdivision outside Yarnell when the winds changed, encircling them in a cloud of smoke and flames
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Granite Mountain Hotshots team leader Eric Marsh radioed through to let his commanders know the group had a predetermined safety zone. Moments later, he radioed back with a more serious message: He and his colleagues - many of whom were barely more than boys - would be deploying their emergency shelters, their last resort against the advancing blaze.
'From what I've heard, it was the calmest they've ever heard Eric,' fire department spokesman Wade Ward said. 'They were in a tight spot and everyone knew this was going to be a b****. But his voice was very calm: "We're deploying."'
Scroll down for videohttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2356611/Heartbreaking-details-final-moments-19-firefighters-died-Arizona.html
Calm: Eric Marsh, left, superintendent of the
Granite Mountain Hotshots, was calm and collected even when he and his
men knew things had taken a turn for the worse
Ward added: 'They all stayed together. Nobody ran.'
The inspirational account comes as new details of the Hotshots' final task emerge.
When the firefighters were killed, they were battling to save a small housing division on the outskirts of Yarnell. But they were suddenly caught in a dense cloud of smoke and flames.
'The only thing standing between those folks and those homes were these 19 guys up on that ridge,' Jeff Knotek, who retired as Prescott Fire Department Captain on Sunday, said, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Before the end: Firefighter Andrew Ashcraft send
this picture of members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots to his wife,
Juliann, shortly before all 19 men were killed
'Unfortunately, the conditions they were in were not survivable.'
Knotek said the team had rushed to the defense of Glen Ilah, which was located about a quarter of a mile southwest of Yarnell. They were on a ridge above the houses, armed with chain saws and axes, trying to build a line of defense between the fire and the homes and tearing down scrub as quickly as possible.
They had made a lot of progress in forging a fire line and had also created a safe zone and an escape route for themselves if the fire intensified.
Brave: A plaque with the victims' names hangs on
the fence outside the Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew fire
station in Prescott, Arizona
Fourth of July: Two women visit a make-shift
memorial outside Fire Station 7 in Prescott, Arizona on July 4th for the
19 firefighter victims of the Yarnell Hill Fire
Heroes: Flowers, pictures, messages and the
number 19 is displayed at a makeshift memorial outside the Granite
Mountain Interagency Hot Shot Crew fire house in Prescott, Arizona July
4, 2013
But a thunderstorm destroyed their efforts and put them suddenly in the center of a cloud of smoke and flames.
'It was a zero-visibility situation,' Knotek said. 'They couldn't see where or what was bottom. They met a wall of flames It came around and hooked them.'
Wade described the thunderstorm as creating 'the perfect storm.'
Emergency crews desperately tried to save the men after the winds changed.
'They had deployed their emergency shelters, and helicopter crews were trying desperately to spot them through dense smoke,' Danny Parker, the firefighter father of one of the victims, Wade Parker, told the Times, wiping away tears.
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