Settlement reached between Arizona, Yarnell Hill Hotshots’ families

PHOENIX — The state of Arizona settled a lawsuit Monday brought by a dozen
families who lost loved ones when a Hotshot firefighting crew was overcome by a
wildfire near the small community of Yarnell.

The settlement announced by state Attorney General Mark Brnovich will pay the
families $50,000 each. Some vowed to donate the money to a new wildland
firefighter safety foundation.

A second part of the agreement ends a state Forestry Division appeal of nearly
$560,000 in fines issued by Arizona’s workplace safety agency, known as ADOSH.

The state agreed to enhance safety training for wildland fire crews and a host
of other changes in how it oversees fires and crews. It also will pay another
seven families $10,000 each.

Family members said they didn’t file the suit for the money but to protect
future firefighters.

“It was a fight that the families couldn’t fight alone, the forester couldn’t
fight alone, ADOSH couldn’t fight alone,” said Juliann Ashcraft, the widow of
firefighter Andrew Ashcraft. “It had to take all of us coming together in a
global resolution to even start talking about what we can do to prevent these
things from happening again.”

The 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots died on June 30, 2013, while fighting a fire
about 80 miles northwest of Phoenix after a thunderstorm caused a wind shift.

The crew members had been in a relatively safe position on a ridge top. For an
unknown reason and without notifying anyone, they moved down the mountainside
through an unburned area where they were trapped by a wall of flames when winds
shifted the fire in their direction.

State workplace safety regulators blamed the largest loss of wildland
firefighters since 1933 on the state Forestry Division, saying they knowingly
put protection of property ahead of safety and should have pulled crews out
earlier.

All but one member of the crew died. The ADOSH investigation found that state
fire officials lacked key personnel to battle the Yarnell Hill Fire at critical
times.

Brnovich said the state had an obligation to settle the lawsuit and to work to
prevent future tragedies.

“As a state, we don’t measure success in wins and losses,” he said. “We
measure our success in whether justice has been done by the victims.”

The settlement came a day before the second anniversary of the deaths of the
Prescott, Arizona-based firefighting crew. The land where the crew lost their
lives will be auctioned off Tuesday and the state Parks Department hopes to be
the winning bidder and turn the 320-acre site outside Yarnell into a memorial
park.

Late Tuesday afternoon, a formal event is planned at the Yavapai County
courthouse in Prescott to commemorate the anniversary.

Andrew Ashcraft’s mother, Deborah Pfingston, said the settlement and the
Forestry Division’s commitment of a slew of changes is a good start.

“It will never end in my mind or my heart, but it is a start that we will get
the change. After two years we feel we are confident with the truth,” Pfingston
said. “We fully believe that the changes that the forester will do in incident
command will save others’ lives.”