On the Burning Edge (29 page)

“I will make sure that it’s known that there was no bad decision made,” Donut said. “That no one is at fault for what happened. Anyone that does come out with negative thoughts, I’ll make it known that I was there. And I know what happened. And it was just an accident. These things happen.”

That wasn’t enough for some families.

“He was their brother, and he owes it to them [and to those of us] trying to wrap our heads around it to start speaking up,” said Juliann Ashcraft, Andrew’s widow. She said her husband “would tell me as he laced up his boots every day, ‘They tell me
Jump
, I say
How high?
I love this community and love serving them with all I’ve got.’ I’ve been underwhelmed and upset by Donut’s actions and his lack of answers.”

The other surviving hotshots have tended to avoid the controversy as much as possible. Renan Packer went back to parking cars at the Scottsdale golf course. He continues to apply for structural firefighting jobs. Bunch couldn’t handle the memories of Granite Mountain everywhere he looked, and he left Prescott for an arborist job in Seattle shortly after the deaths. But the dampness of the Pacific Northwest, plus black mold in his rental, threatened to make his new baby sick. The Bunches moved back to Prescott just a few months later, and in the spring of 2015 he planned to return to hotshotting.

Heather Kennedy and Scott Norris’s family did not join the lawsuit. In their estimation, Scott had understood the risks he exposed himself to, and they didn’t believe a lawsuit would honor his wishes. Heather had the hardest time believing that he hadn’t spoken up when the crew decided to leave the black. “He knew better,” she said.

Heather stayed with the Prescott Police Department and bought a house, as she and Scott had planned on doing together. When she moved, among the last things she took from their home was the chewing gum Scott had left in the shower on one of their final nights together. For months after Yarnell Hill, she sent him text messages. Sometimes they were updates about her life and the dogs. Mostly, they were pained. On August 20, almost two months after Scott died, she texted him:

“Sometimes I feel as if everyday is just another step closer to seeing you again. But it’s about the journey, not the destination, right?”

Leah Fine grew to disdain media coverage that cast Grant and the eighteen others as selfless heroes, friends to the end who died proudly doing the job they’d dreamed of. She knew that if Grant had fully understood what he was risking, he never would have signed up for Granite Mountain in the spring of 2013. He’d still be washing dishes at the Mexican restaurant while trying to find a paramedic’s job. And he would have been content to be at home with her. Leah, though, now had less reason to stay home, and in the fall after Grant died, she decided that adventure and hard work might help her cope. She decided to become a hotshot.