Loss Of 9 In Blaze Won't Stop Prineville Hotshots

PRINEVILLE, Ore. - Last summer, Joe Brinkley promised his brother, Levi, that they would be together this year as members of the elite Prineville Hotshots fighting forest fires across the West.

But Levi Brinkley was one of the nine Prineville Hotshots who died July 6 fighting the South Canyon fire on Storm King Mountain outside Glenwood Springs, Colo.

So Joe Brinkley, 24, in his first year with the group, has teamed up with Tony Johnson, 24, a hotshot veteran whose brother, Rob, was also among those who died.

"I called him Levi for a couple days," Johnson said in a break from training for the upcoming fire season. "But now it's Joe. It's not Levi anymore."

In all, 14 firefighters died when an abrupt change in the weather whipped the flames on Storm King Mountain into a firestorm.

Investigators found that procedural violations and plain indifference by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service contributed to the deaths. Adequate escape routes weren't set up and news of the approach of high winds that breathed new life into the fire wasn't relayed quickly to firefighters.

As a result, there is a renewed emphasis on safety everywhere people are preparing to fight forest fires this year.

"What has come up is a lot of good introspective looking at how we fight fires," said Bill Fish, fire staff officer on the Ochoco National Forest, where the Prineville Hotshots are based.

In Missoula, Mont., the Forest Service is studying forest firefighter behavior in the first workshop of its kind. Among the questions they are asking is why some of the firefighters who died on Storm King Mountain didn't drop their tools, which would have let them run faster when trying to escape the flames.

TRAINEES REVIEW THE DISASTER

In addition to their physical training the past two weeks, the Prineville Hotshots got a presentation on the South Canyon fire.

"It was probably very emotional for much of the crew," said crew supervisor Tom Shepard, himself a survivor of the South Canyon fire. "I know it was for me."

Of the 11 Prineville Hotshots who survived the fire, seven came back this summer with Shepard to fight fire again.

Among the ones who didn't return was Brian Scholz, who was crew foreman on Storm King Mountain. He's now dispatcher at the Redmond Air Center, a Forest Service base for smokejumpers and fire-retardant bombers.

"I jumped on it for a variety of reasons, not the least of which we just had a baby girl eight weeks ago," Scholz said.

Scholz credits his own survival to Shepard's allowing him and some other firefighters to decline to go into the ravine where fire trapped those who died.

MEMORIAL TO THE DEAD IN WORKS

One thing crew leaders agreed on after the fire was that more rules aren't needed - firefighters need to feel confident they can question judgment calls, Scholz said.

"Just because you're new doesn't mean you can't ask that question," he said.

Kim Valentine didn't come back, either. She decided the night her friends died she wasn't coming back. She has a new job rebuilding stream banks and other wildlife habitat.

The names of the dead will be on a monument to wildland firefighters everywhere that will be erected in this high-desert town in Eastern Oregon: Jon Kelso, Kathi Beck, Scott Blecha, Levi Brinkley, Bonnie Holtby, Rob Johnson, Tami Bickett, Doug Dunbar and Terri Hagen.

Kathy Brinkley was philosophical about one son joining the Hotshots after another son died fighting fire.

"We have to let him do what he wants to do," she said. "He's grown."