Abstract
Nineteen Prescott Fire Department, Granite Mountain Hot Shot (GMHS) wildland firefighters (WF) perished in Arizona in June 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire, an inexplicable wildland fire disaster. In complex wildland fires, sudden, dynamic changes in human factors and fire conditions can occur, thus mistakes can be unfortunately fatal. Individual and organizational faults regarding the predictable, puzzling, human failures that will result in future WF deaths are addressed. The GMHS were individually, then collectively fixated with abandoning their Safety Zone to reengage, committing themselves at the worst possible time, to relocate to another Safety Zone - a form of collective tunnel vision. Our goal is to provoke meaningful discussion toward improved wildland firefighter safety with practical solutions derived from a long-established wildland firefighter expertise/performance in a fatality-prone profession. Wildfire fatalities are unavoidable, hence these proposals, applied to ongoing training, can significantly contribute to other well-thought-out and validated measures to reduce them.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to express their gratitude to: Dr. Martha Underwood and Dr. Katie Orozco for their proficient knowledge and skills in managing this paper; Dr. Ted Putnam for his Human Factors insight; Joy ‘Desert Walker’ Collura for her rare and priceless YH Fire insight; WantsToKnowTheTruth; Woosdman; Gary Olson; sources mandated silence due to Department and/or Agency ‘direction’, and sources that choose silence. To those who lost family, friends, and loved ones, the authors and most WFF think about those young men daily. They inspired us to write.
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Schoeffler, F.J., Honda, L. (2019). It Could Not Be Seen Because It Could Not Be Believed on June 30, 2013. In: Boring, R. (eds) Advances in Human Error, Reliability, Resilience, and Performance. AHFE 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 778. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94391-6_22
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