At 4:42 p.m. Saturday, June 30, a memorial bell cut through the silence of the courthouse plaza, honoring the fallen 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots killed five years ago fighting the Yarnell Hill Fire, ringing once for each name.
Andrew Ashcraft, Robert Caldwell, Travis Carter, Dustin DeFord, Christopher MacKenzie, Eric Marsh, Grant McKee, Sean Misner, Scott Norris, Wade Parker, John Percin Jr., Anthony Rose, Jesse Steed, Joe Thurston, Travis Turbyfill, William Warneke, Clayton Whitted, Kevin Woyjeck, and Garret Zuppiger.
Prescott Fire Department Fire Engineer and former Granite Mountain Hotshot crew member Patrick McCarty read the names.
Bringing up the theory of Six Degrees of Separation, which posits that all living things and everything else in the world are six or fewer steps away from each other so that a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps, Prescott Fire Chief Dennis Light said that there are more than 600 connections between the families of the Granite Mountain Hotshots and an infinite number of connections within the Prescott community to them.