Dierks Bentley visits Yarnell to honor fallen firefighters
Country music superstar Dierks Bentley stopped in Arizona Monday to visit the site where 19 firefighters died battling a wildfire threatening the town of Yarnell in 2013.
He posted a photo with his mother at the Granite Mountain Hotshots Memorial State Park, writing that they wanted to "pay our respects to the" Granite Mountain Hotshots crew members.
On that fateful day in 2013, the fire had been burning through the dry chaparral on the ridge above Yarnell when the wind changed directions and pushed the flames back toward town. As residents fled, the hotshots — an elite firefighting team from nearby Prescott — were trapped on a hillside. The flames cut off their escape route. Nineteen of the unit’s 20 men were killed.
MORE: Hiking where the Granite Mountain Hotshots fell
It was the deadliest day for U.S. firefighters since Sept. 11. The blaze destroyed 127 homes and burned 8,400 acres in and around the town.
The park and trail, which carves its way up through the Weaver Mountains before descending into the canyon where the firefighters died, opened last November. The approximately 7-mile round trip hike is difficult and takes approximately five hours.
Bentley wrote that he stopped to visit the park after co-hosting the 52nd Annual Academy of Country Music Awards with Luke Bryan in Las Vegas on Sunday. Bentley is from Phoenix and has three locations of his Dierks Bentley Whiskey Row restaurants in the Valley. Bentley is one of the headliners of this year's Country Thunder music festival in Florence; he performs Friday night.
A movie based on the tragedy, called "Granite Mountain" and starring Jennifer Connelly, Josh Brolin, Miles Teller, Jeff Bridges, Taylor Kitsch and James Badge Dale, is set to be released in September.
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