AFTER THE SMOKE CLEARED

On June 30, 2013, a seemingly routine wildfire broke out southwest of Prescott. But within 24 hours, the Yarnell Hill Fire had become anything but ordinary when 19 heroic hotshots lost their lives fighting the blaze. The tragedy was front-page news around the world. It wasn't the only story, though. A team of unsung heroes was working relentlessly behind the scenes, and a year later, it's still fighting the effects of the fire.

BY KATHY MONTGOMERY PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID ZICKL

From HAPPY WAY, STEVE AND DEBI KEEHNER watched their beloved oaks until it was too dark and smoky to see.

They had spent the day, June 30, driving around, watching the fire burning on Yarnell Hill.

As they watched, smoke built up and seemed to burst into flames and take off toward Peeples Valley. They had checked on friends there who were evacuating, and they headed home about 3 p.m.

By then, “you could see [the fire], feel it,” Debi recalls. “It was getting hard to breathe. We started loading our dogs, stuff out of the safe, photo albums, and just all of a sudden it was there, right at the edge of the hill.” The Keehners fled in two vehicles, crossing State Route 89 and driving up Happy Way to a good van-tage point. They couldn't see the neighborhood of Glen Ilah, but they saw the glow and heard propane tanks exploding. They scanned Yarnell until they spotted their oaks, relieved to see green.

BOB BRANDON COULDN'T SEE THE HOOD OF HIS TANKER. The veteran volunteer firefighter had attended a briefing that morning at the command post set up at Model Creek School in Peeples Valley. Brandon helped start the Peeples Valley Fire Department in the early '90s and served as its first chief. He had stepped down from active involvement, but now he wanted to help.

His crew was charged with creating a firebreak west of Shrine Road. A bulldozer coming from GlenIlah was to connect with them. He didn't know it until later, but he was part of a larger team that included the Granite Mountain Hotshots.

Brandon listened to the chain saws and watched the slurry bomber fly over at regular intervals. About midafternoon, the dozer came rambling through the woods, Jurassic Park-like, knocking down trees. Then, without explanation, it did a 180 and left without finishing the job. Shortly afterward, Brandon noticed the slurry bomber had changed course. His lookout came down to say he'd just heard a weather report. The winds were changing, but he didn't understand what that meant.

“We looked up behind Boulder Mountain, and the fire was standing straight up, about a hundred feet high,” Brandon recalls. “We were thinking, 'That's not right. Because the fire was way north of us.” The sky darkened. Brandon was about to press the siren that was the crew's signal to abandon when the incident commander for the area pulled up and told him to move the trucks. Brandon protested that he needed to gather his crew, but the commander insisted, “You have to do it now.” The next instant, the fire dropped over them like a gigantic hand. It was pitch black and loud, as if they were standing behind a jet. And everything was on fire.

Brandon picked his way through the darkness, finally connecting with his crew, and they got out. It wasn't until he learned that 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots had died that he realized how differently it could have ended.

AFTER FRANCES LECHNER EVACUATED, 80 EMAILS

A day flooded her inbox. On July 1, an email from the Yavapai County Community Foundation got her attention. The organization was matching donations up to $25,000 for fire victims. The media release said disbursement would be overseen by a committee of "expert staff and community volunteers."

The next day, the matching amount rose to $125,000. Lechner sent out an email to other people active in the community, suggesting they meet to elect such a committee. Paul Jones, a pastor at Yarnell Community Presbyterian Church, got the email and arranged a tax-exempt bank account to accept funds through his church. Yarnell Community Center executive director Scott Shephard responded with a proposed organization consisting of a steering committee with subcommittees to handle donations of money, food and clothing, as well asvolunteers, animals, cleanup, counseling, fundraising and thank-yous.

Four days later, 12 people assembled north of Peeples Valley at the home of Kathleen Stowe, a founding member of Weaver Mountains Care Resources, recently organized to fill a gap in social services. Five others participated by phone. By the end of the meeting, the group had elected Lechner, Jones, Shephard and Stowe, along with chamber-ofcommerce president Chuck Tidey, to the steering committee of a group that didn't yet have a name.

As steering-committee chairman, Tidey made contact with Yavapai County emergency-management coordinator Denny Foulk at a meeting for evacuees in Wickenburg. It took Foulk by surprise. It was Foulk's job to seek out community leaders to organize a recovery committee. It was the first time a committee had come looking for him.

Two days after the fire tore through Yarnell, Frances Lechner took the lead in forming a steering committee to handle donations and organize volunteers.

WALTER AND MARIA ADAMS LEFT HOME WITH HOT ASHES

and smoke blowing over them. They took whatever they could pack and four dogs, two of them rescues. When they returned, nothing but the stone fireplace remained of their home.

Maria had lived in the house for 18 years, Walter for 10. They were renters with no renters insurance, and the owner chose not to rebuild.

Through the newly formed Yarnell Hill Recovery Group's housing office, Stowe arranged for a donated camper until the Adamses could find a new home. Walter got some clothes from the group's donation center. They picked up weekly groceries, even food for their dogs, at its food bank.

Then Stowe found the couple a home. The owner had been a seasonal resident for nearly 30 years. "We came over and met [the owner],” Walter recalls. “We knew her for an hour. She told us rent's $300 a month. It will never raise, and we have the option to buy. Everything was here. We needed nothing but food. On top of that, somebody paid our rent for a year.”

BY THE TIME THE EVACUATION ORDER WAS LIFTED ON

July 8, the Keehners knew their home was gone. That didn't soften the blow when they saw the blackened oaks and all their possessions reduced to nothing but rubble and ash.

Steve had lived in the house since he was 12 or 13. When they had married 40 years earlier, Steve and Debi had bought it from his parents. Their daughter had slept in the bedroom Steve had slept in as a child.

"The guy who built it never should have been allowed to have a hammer,” Steve liked to say. They could never get insurance. Now, they didn't know what they would do. Steve had a good job. But without insurance, it wasn't enough to rebuild. So they did the only thing they could: They set to work.

Volunteers descended in waves: the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, Southern Baptist Disaster Relief. The Keehners politely declined help. But a crew leader from Samaritan's Purse persisted until they relented.

“This one gal came up and thanked me for letting her help,” Debi recalls. Her brother was Jesse Steed, one of the 19 hotshots who died. His aunt was there, too. They came because it was what Jesse would have wanted, she told Debi. He'd be there himself, if he could.

“I lost it,” Debi says. “The strength these people had to come in and do what they did gave me strength.” BY AUGUST, THE FIRST RESPONDERS HAD MOVED OUT OF the community center, and the remaining agencies had relocated to the Presbyterian church. With the center set to reopen and the recovery effort shifting from disaster relief to rebuilding, Shephard stepped down from the steering committee.

The remaining members invited Brandon to replace him and serve as reconstruction director to oversee rebuilding for uninsured primary homeowners, using donated funds and volunteer labor. Brandon had misgivings about working with the uninsured.Then he met Foulk, who talked about the responsibilities of a disaster-relief team. In a disaster, Foulk said, you first help the people who have nothing.

Brandon knew he had something to offer beyond experience in construction. Years earlier, he had lost his home to a fire on Christmas Day.

“I prayed about it,” Brandon says. “I made the dedication to myself and to God that I would do it.” WORKING EVERY DAY FROM EARLY MORNING UNTIL IT was too dark to see, the Keehners kept too busy to attend the community meetings. Through neighbors, they heard about the Yarnell Hill Recovery Group. Word was they would be rebuilding homes, starting with the uninsured.

Yeah, right, Debi thought. Somebody's going to build me a house? Why?

There were meetings that were mostly a blur and house plans designed by building-committee chairman Marco Cecala, a neighbor who lived around the corner. Then, one day, trucks pulled up hauling trailers that read, “Apostolic Christian World Relief.” “They wanted to know where they could park the trailers,” Steve recalls. “They were here to build houses.” Once again, the Keehners rolled up their sleeves, becoming laborers on their own home and helping BRANDON HAD MISGIVINGS ABOUT WORKING WITH THE UNINSURED. THEN HE MET FOULK, WHO TALKED ABOUT THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF A DISASTERRELIEF TEAM. IN A DISASTER. FOULK SAID, YOU FIRST HELP THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOTHING.

ing with other homes for the uninsured. Using his employer's backhoe, Steve dug footers. He helped pour concrete and did whatever else was needed.

“That was nice,” Debi says. “To feel we were giving back and not just taking, taking, taking.” They spent Christmas Day working on their own septic system, and they moved in on January 3. Debi picked out donated furniture she loved from the United Way fire-relief warehouse in Prescott with the help of warehouse manager Crystal Ogden, who set aside pieces she thought would go well with what they had already picked out.

WALTER ADAMS LOVED HIS NEW HOUSE, WHICH HE calls “totally, uniquely Yarnell,” and set about making steel sculptures for the yard.

Inside, he and Maria were surprised to find things they had lost.

“Even a washcloth that was my husband's favorite: striped lavender, green, blue,” Maria says. “What do we find in the bathroom? It was just amazing.” It took Maria a long time to feel at home in the house. She still sifts through the rubble and ashes of her former home.

“A couple of things miraculously survived,” she says: porcelain knickknacks and a vase from the Hungarian town of Kiskorös.

“That's where I was born,” Maria says. “We came over during the revolution in '56. We were refugees. When I went to visit Hungary, I brought that [vase] home with me. A lot of my Hungarian things are gone except for that one little thing. It was crazy.” IN MARCH, THE LAST OF NINE HOMES FOR UNINSURED primary homeowners passed its final inspection, completing phase one of the recovery. The steering committee also transitioned, with Brandon stepping down to make way for someone with skills useful in the next phases.

The Keehners began decorating their new home, including a banner that reads, “In loving memory of our heroes,” with the Granite Mountain Hotshots emblem surrounded by the names of the 19 fallen firefighters. They vow never to forget them.

It's still hard sometimes, Debi says. “But it's a new life, a new everything. You have to have a new frame of mind.” If she could turn back the clock and undo the destruction of 19 lives, she'd do it in a heartbeat.

“But it's not in the cards, and for whatever reason, this is where I'm supposed to be,” she says. “Maybe it was the good Lord's way of saying there are a lot of good things out there if I open my eyes and heart and let people in.” AH To donate to fire-recovery efforts or learn more about the Yarnell Hill Recovery Group, visit www.yarnellhillrecoverygroup.org.

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