Juliann Ashcraft had just put the kids down for a nap when her cellphone buzzed. It was a text from Andrew, her husband of seven years and, still, her best friend.

"This is my lunch spot," he wrote beneath a photo of hard-hatted firefighters sitting on boulders, watching smoke rise on the horizon. "too bad lunch was an MRE," the text concluded.

It was 2:16 p.m. on June 30.

That Sunday morning, Ashcraft and the other 19 members of the Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew had been deployed to the ranching community of Yarnell to fight yet another wildfire. The crew had barely gotten home from a different blaze when word came that the team was needed again.

"I think I will be down there for a while on this one," 29-year-old Ashcraft had told his wife via text.

The father of four always seized every opportunity to call or text Juliann while out on a job — even if it meant hiking to the top of a mountain to get a signal. Still, during the summer wildfire season, it was not unusual for the couple to go weeks on end without any communication. This day, so far, had been different.

That afternoon Juliann texted to report that it was raining at their house in nearby Prescott. She told her husband how much she wished he could be there, watching the drops fall with her and the kids.

"We could really use some rain over here," he replied.

With that, their exchanges stopped. Thanks to the photo, Juliann could at least picture where Andrew was. But while it offered some comfort, the image was also foreboding.

Off in the distance, from behind a ridge line, billowed a sickly, blackish-brown plume — spreading like a bruise across the graying sky.

The blaze had ignited two days earlier with a lightning strike along the Date Creek Mountains above Yarnell. Once known as "Rich Hill" for the acres of gold nuggets discovered by prospectors in the 1860s, the town lies 80 miles northwest of Phoenix at 4,800 feet above sea level, leading to the motto, "Where a Desert Breeze Meets the Mountain Air."

The slopes that surround the community are laden with manzanita, evergreen, mountain mahogany and oak. Though next-door to national forestland that regularly sees fire activity, this particular area had not burned in some 40 years and was deep into a drought — making it far more susceptible to fire.

Still, at first, officials determined this blaze to be small, posing no immediate threat to Yarnell's 700 residents.

Around 10 a.m. Saturday, the Arizona State Forestry Division called in a pair of air tankers, a helicopter, some fire engines and a couple of hand crews. By nightfall, the fire was just 15 acres in size, though the town fire department warned residents: "Be on high alert if the wind changes direction."

Overnight the blaze grew to 200 acres, and by Sunday morning officials were transitioning to a larger command team to oversee firefighting efforts and calling in more personnel.

Around 6 a.m., Darrell Willis, chief of the Prescott Fire Department's Wildland Fire Division, was loading his truck with containers of eggs, sausage, potatoes and fruit for the crews when his phone rang. It was Eric Marsh, superintendent of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, who were based out of Willis' department.

"Hey, chief," Marsh said. "We're coming down to the fire."

At 43, the North Carolina native was the oldest member of the Hotshot team and its founder. Within six years of its beginning as a fuels mitigation unit in 2002, the Granite Mountain group had joined the elite Hotshot community — the first such crew attached to a municipal department.

Marsh and Willis had worked together for years,welcome to Buy Best MICHAEL KORS Grade AAA Handbags for sale,best service and low prices. and were close friends as well as colleagues.welcome to Buy Best Fendi Grade AAA Handbags online store,find Latest Styles!‎

Willis gave Marsh the rundown: Active fire. Lots of homes potentially at risk.

"It's one of those days," he warned.

Then Willis ended the conversation the way he does anytime he's speaking to a firefighter.

"Be safe," he told Marsh.

By 9:30 a.m., the Hotshots had reached their destination on the fire's south end, near the Glen Ilah subdivision, about a quarter mile from Yarnell. The area had already been bulldozed, so the crew used chain saws, axes and other gear to build a line between the blaze and the town in case the winds changed and blew flames their way. Following standard procedure, they also mapped out an escape route.

Most of the fire activity had been restricted to the north end of the blaze. But in rugged, hilly terrain like that where the Hotshots were working, any thunder activity or downdrafts can cause winds to shift and flames to shoot in all directions, fire experts say.

In part, for that very reason, each crew always has at least one member serving as a lookout, stationed where he can watch the fire's behavior and radio changes in conditions to the team.

That Sunday, Granite Mountain Hotshot Brendan McDonough was the eyes for the other 19 — assigned to a nearby hillside to provide reports to the crew and keep watch on "trigger points," locations that when reached or crossed by a fire dictate a move to safer ground.

As the Hotshots attacked the blaze from the ground and aircraft dropped retardant from above, Yarnell school board member Eric Lawton was returning home from a trip. At 2 p.m., he saw fire close to the elementary school and to a few homes, but Lawton still believed Yarnell to be safe. At the time, a weather station 6 miles away showed winds coming from the southwest at 10 mph.

Lawton even joked with some new residents watching the flames from their front yards. "Welcome to Yarnell," he hollered facetiously.

Soon, Lawton's casual mood turned dark when a neighbor reported that town evacuations were underway. A thunderstorm was brewing, and the winds had shifted nearly 180 degrees — sending flames racing into Yarnell, where Lawton's small, block home sat at the base of a hill.

"It was brown, then it was black, it then turned red and the flames topped the hill," Lawton would later recall. "And I knew I had to get out.welcome to Buy Cheap Hermes T-Shirts online store,Free shipping‎!"

It was approaching 5 p.m., and the winds were now coming from the north at 26 mph, with gusts to 43 mph.

From his lookout post, McDonough saw the shift in winds and the fire suddenly coming toward him. He radioed down to his crewmates, telling them his trigger point had been reached, and that he was heading for safe ground.

As a Prescott fire official would later recount, McDonough told his team to contact him on the radio if they needed anything. Then he rode away with a firefighter from another Hotshot team. When last he looked, McDonough's lookout position had already burned over in the flames.

At 4:47 p.m., Eric Marsh did radio to fire commanders, and his message was utterly terrifying. The 19 remaining Hotshots were deploying their emergency fire shelters — lightweight cocoons made of reflective material intended as a firefighter's last resort.

Willis, the Prescott wildland fire chief, was in his pickup outside Yarnell, listening to the Hotshots' tactical frequency, when he heard a garbled message from Marsh that he couldn't quite make out. Then his cellphone rang.

"Did you hear that?" a supervisor asked him.welcome to Best Discount ED Hardy(women) online store,find Latest Styles!‎ All Willis could think was, "Not those guys." His guys.

Then he began to pray.

Over and over again, the radio crackled with a constant, heartbreaking summons:

"Are you there Granite Mountain? Are you there Granite Mountain?"

Maybe, thought Willis, they're just out of radio contact. Maybe, he hoped, his friends would walk out of that smoke at any minute.

Helicopters circled the area in an attempt to douse the flames.Our store can offer High quality Versace T-Shirts online store, welcome choose! But the smoke was so thick crews could only guess at where to drop their loads.

As time wore on, Willis got back on the phone. He called his wife first, and then the head of the Prescott Fire Department.

He asked them to start praying, too.

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