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QUEEN CREEK, Arizona — One year ago, a wildfire in Arizona killed 19 people. The Yarnell Hill fire burned roughly 13 square miles, and although the small town where it burned is essentially back to normal, the human cost will never be forgotten.
Juliann Ashcraft, wife of one of the firefighters who died, said hope gets her through her toughest days.
Ashcraft said she talks to her husband, Andrew Ashcraft, in a small room in the corner of her house. She's heard the saying, “Time heals all wounds.” But in this room time stands still, and she wants it that way.
“I used to dream of growing old with Andrew, and now I feel guilty for growing old at all,” she said. “You just start to feel like, why do I get to be here if he’s not here? And there is a weird guilt element I didn’t expect that comes with grief.”
It's been one year since her husband was one of 19 Granite Mountain Hotshot firefighters killed in the Yarnell Hill wildfire near their Prescott, Arizona, home. For one year, she and her four young children have been on their own.
“I still feel broken in a lot of aspects in my life, but I think we’re doing OK,” she said. “You know, as a family we’re learning what normal is like now, and we’re taking one day at a time.”
If "one day at a time" sounds like a cliche, it is, but Juliann doesn't know how else to explain what the past year has been like. Raising four kids, ages 2 to 7, is a challenge every single day, she said.
Even though Andrew isn't there to help, she believes he's still around.
“I’m not a single parent. My children have a dad. They have a wonderful, amazing dad. I just need to realize how I can carry him through spiritually with our family. It’s really a challenge because I remember how loving and how tender and how close Andrew was with all four of our kids,” she said.
Even though the community support in Prescott was amazing, especially during the early, tough, dark days, Juliann still felt like she needed to get away from it all. So, in January she and her four children moved 140 miles away to Queen Creek, Arizona.
“It got to be too much tragedy for them there,” she said. “When we came to Queen Creek, there’s no less of a reminder of Andrew because we think about him every second of every day. But it’s his life and not his death, and that has been very healing for our family.”
However, she said one big issue hasn't been resolved: her husband’s benefits. The city of Prescott, that Andrew worked for as a firefighter, claimed he wasn't a fulltime firefighter even though he routinely worked more than 40 hours a week, Juliann said. The city's public safety board voted last month to pay his benefits but the city can still appeal the decision.
“The money will absolutely help our family to provide for them. He provided in life. I can show my kids he provided in death. But it wasn’t for me. It was a way of seeing through something that my husband had started,” she said.
For now, she's doing her best, keeping her husband alive in her children's memories. And when she needs a few minutes, she has the room where she doesn't have to be so strong.
“There’s not a question in my mind that Andrew is in heaven and that I will be with him,” she said. “There is just no question.”
