Thousands of Mourners Honor 19 Fallen Firefighters
Thousands of people paid their respects to the 19 Hotshot firefighters killed in last week’s Arizona wildfire at a procession through Phoenix.
Carrying American flags and patriotic signs, the mourners lined highways and overpasses as 19 white hearses carrying the fallen traveled for 125 miles through Arizona cities and towns.
Fellow firefighters, the men’s family members and residents of Yarnell, the small town they died trying to save, openly cried as the hourslong caravan crawled past.
The crew of elite Granite Mountain Hotshots was working to build a fire line between the blaze and Yarnell when erratic winds suddenly shifted the fire’s direction, causing it to hook around the firefighters and cut off access to a ranch that was to be their safety zone.
‘It’s overwhelming to watch this slow procession of 19 hearses,’ Bill Morse, a Flagstaff fire captain stationed in Prescott for a week helping the fire department deal with the tragedy, told Dallas News.