It began on July 3 as a thin column of smoke from a single tree on the southwestern flank of Colorado's Storm King Mountain, about five miles outside the resort town of Glen-wood Springs. To battle the brush-fire, which was apparently started by a lightning strike, fire-control officials decided to call in a squad of locally based firefighters from the Bureau of Land Management. On July 6, as the blaze began to build, additional help arrived in the form of mobile smoke-jumper units, which are generally used in inaccessible areas, from as far away as McCall, Idaho, and Winthrop, Wash. The reinforcements included 20 members of an elite Hot Shot firefighting team, specialists in tackling major blazes, from little Prineville, Ore.

That day, about 50 of the firefighters were deployed along the South Canyon Ridge, battling what was still a relatively modest blaze. Then it happened. In a matter of seconds, the wind changed direction and intensified; almost instantly the crews were trapped in an inferno. When the blowup, as firefighters call it, was over, 14, including 4 women, had been killed in one of the worst disasters ever to befall forest firefighters. Among the dead were nine members of the Prineville Hot Shots. Traumatized by the experience, many of those who escaped declined to talk about the episode afterwards. But a team of PEOPLE correspondents pieced together the following account of the tragedy from interviews with several survivors.

LOUIE NAVARRO, 23, Prineville Hot Shot: The helicopter left us on the South Canyon Ridge, and we were told to get a big area on both sides cleared out. The brush on the slope below us had been burning for days. There hadn't been any wind to drive it, so the fire would just creep day and night. And as it would burn, it would dry up the scrub oak—the canopy. So all the ground fuels were dead, and the canopy was preheated and ready to burn.

TOM RAMBO, 22, Prineville Hot Shot: Our crew goes to so many fires it seemed like business as usual when we got there. There were winds, but they hadn't picked up. It seemed pretty damned routine. That might have been part of the problem.

DEREK BRIXEY, 21, Florence, Colo.: We were on the northwest slope of the mountain, about 150 yards from the top of the ridge. Our job was to clear underbrush with chain saws in a 20-foot-wide path, and the other firefighters were to create a two-foot hand line [dirt strip] down the middle to serve as a firebreak. Shortly before 3:30 p.m., a cold front had moved into the area. The winds became very strong and erratic.

NAVARRO: We were throwing the cut brush above us, and the wind would just suck it up 100 feet. That was how intense the wind got up there. I've never seen anything like it.

Suddenly the wind-whipped blaze had circled around the. firefighters, and flames were advancing from the bottom of the ravine as well as expanding on the side of the slope. A squad of firefighters, including roughly a dozen Hot Shots, working near the bottom of the ravine began to struggle up the sharp incline.

BRYAN SGHOLZ, 36, Prineville Hot Shot crew foreman: Jon Kelso radioed us from the slope and said there was a spot fire below them. Tom Shepard told them to get out of there.

BRIXEY: I looked back and saw some of the Hot Shots in a single-file line, walking at a fast pace, a few-feet apart. Then it just got crazy. There was smoke and then, like WHAM! the mountain was afire.

NAVARRO: I remember looking out from the ridge and seeing clear. I reached down, and as I looked back up about 5 seconds later, the whole skyline was completely black. People started running along the top of the ridge and dropping their gear. I tossed aside the gas can for the chain saw and heard it explode a few seconds later.

BRIXEY: You could just feel like a red cloud was behind you, and the ground was a real eerie color of red with ash floating right by you. Your first instinct is to run. I didn't even have time to think, "I'm going to die," or to think about my wife or family.

NAVARRO: The flames reached 150 feet. They shot up like a tidal wave. They were pounding the fire line like they were reaching for unburned fuels. The flames were incredibly fast; the fire moved about three-eighths of a mile in 25 seconds.

ERIC HIPKE, 32, Auburn, Wash.: I kept looking back. Then the whole canyon just blew up. The cinders started rolling, and a blast of heat knocked me to the ground. That's when I got burned. All the flesh was hanging off my hands.

RAMBO: Being on the ridge was like standing on the surface of the sun and trying to run someplace cool. I don't know if there's such a thing as an organized panic, but that's what it was. We stuck together like we always do.

BRIXEY: I don't know if the crew behind us, from Prineville, was ever in a full, dead-out run. I don't know if they could see how intense the fire was behind them.

NAVARRO: In the scramble on the top of the ridge, some of the crew started tripping and falling. At one point Kim Valentine stopped. Bryan was the one who made her keep going. He was practically pulling her down the hill.

SCHOLZ: I thought she was hurt, but there was no way she was going to be left there. We were all on the ground at one time or another. She just needed help getting out. It could have been the reverse, and she would have helped me.

NAVARRO: As we ran along the ridge, we saw this gully. We are trained not to go into a gully, because if the wind comes up it's like you're in a bowl with fire in the base of it. But that was our only option. That first mile was hell because you didn't know where that fire was. You could still hear it, sounding like a freight train.

SCHOLZ: It took us 45 minutes to get out of that gully, and most of that time we didn't know if there might be fire below us.

NAVARRO: When we got to highway 1-70 we poured our canteens on the smoke jumper [Eric Hipke]. Once we dumped them all, I pulled out my space blanket and put it over him. And then I just started praying. I was praying that everybody else made it out alive. We were driven to a park. Two doctors showed up and told us we needed to talk. When we were taken to a nearby hotel, everybody was clearing out of the way for us and bursting into tears. In a conference room they told us there were 11 nonconfirmed fatalities. We lost it. I went and threw up. Tony Johnson had lost his brother Rob. I couldn't look at him. I had to leave the room. I have a little brother too.

RAMBO: I don't think I'd cried in 10 years. I cried for two days. We knew every one of those people, and we loved them.

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A Town with a Proud Firefighting Tradition Mourns Its Dead
ON THE MORNING OF JULY 9, THE PEOPLE of Prineville, Ore., lined both sides of Highway 126, their eyes riveted on the nine riderless horses trotting slowly toward them from the west. Following the horses lumbered a U.S. Forest Service truck with nine half-mast flags in its bed. Many onlookers had tears in their eyes, and some sobbed openly as they watched the memorial pass by. Of 14 firefighters who had died battling a killer blaze near Glenwood Springs, Colo., on July 6, nine were members of Prineville's elite Interagency Hot Shot team. "The fire touched everyone here," says Prineville's Mayor Todd Vallie. "Everyone knew somebody." So many residents wanted to pin Hot Shot blue ribbons on their chests that townsfolk had to call Portland, some 150 miles away, for more material.

Nationwide there are 61 20-member Hot Shot teams that fight wilderness fires. Given that Prineville, a town of 5,900, is economically dependent on the nearby forests and lumber mills, it is hardly surprising that one is located here. Nor is it surprising that joining the Hot Shots has become something of a rite of passage for the youth of the area. One of those who died, 21-year-old Bonnie Holtby, had followed both her father and grandfather into firefighting. "I never told her that's what I wanted her to do, but one time we were out in the forest cutting firewood and saw the Hot Shot crew was working nearby," recalls Bonnie's father, Ralph. "I could tell she was impressed. I think she saw it as a challenge."

Because of the extreme physical demands of the job, the Hot Shots are young—the nine who died were all in their 20s. Some are drawn to firefighting because of the relatively high pay (up to $200 a day) while others seek different rewards. "He loved the excitement of the work," says Kirk Blecha, whose 27-year-old son Scott was among those killed. "More than that, he loved saving people's property and lives."

Firefighting dominated their lives. "Bonnie's crew became like a family for her," says Ralph Holtby. Between fires, the Hot Shots hung out together in their blue T-shirts. On the outskirts of Prineville, eight of the Hot Shots lived together in two adjacent apartments they jokingly called the Love Shack (home to victims Blecha and Doug Dunbar, 22, as well as survivors Louie Navarro, 23, Tom Rambo, 22, and Alex Robertson, 23) and the Puppy Love Shack (where survivor Tony Johnson, 23, lived with his brother Robert Johnson, 26, and Levi Brinkley, 22, both of whom perished in the blaze). When the tragic news came from Storm King Mountain, the firefighters' landlord placed nine tiny American flags in the ground outside the apartment complex. "We did everything together," says Navarro. "Out on a fire, you work together 14 hours a day, then you go to sleep, and you sleep four or five inches away from the next person."

In the days since the tragedy that closeness has helped ease the pain of the Prineville survivors. "We've pretty much been together for the last four or five days," says Rambo. "I don't think I've been a second alone except for when I was in the shower. That's what it takes."