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On the Burning Edge

Fire burns above the town of Yarnell, Arizona

  Two years ago, a wildfire ignited near a small town in central Arizona. The 20 elite firefighters of the Granite Mountain Hotshots were sent to fight the blaze. Only one of them survived. Not since 9/11 had so many firefighters been killed in the line of duty. Friday, the journalist Kyle Dickman joins us to talk about his new book that tells the story of the Granite Mountain crew and the tragic Yarnell Hill Fire they died trying to put out. It’s also a window into the intense world of wildland firefighting.

Kyle Dickman is a former editor at Outside magazine and a former member of the Tahoe Hotshots. He fought wildfires in California for five seasons. His new book is called On the Burning Edge: A Fateful Fire and the Men Who Fought It [Amazon|Indiebound].

A Salt Lake native, Benjamin Bombard served numerous internships in the KUER newsroom before becoming a producer of RadioWest. He aspired to the position for years, and in his sometimes wayward pursuit of it he has worked as a print and radio journalist in Utah, Wyoming, and California, a horse wrangler, golf course “bag rat,” dishwasher, janitor, bookseller, children’s museum guide, barista, linecook, and a male nanny or “manny.” He has dished up gelato to Mafiosos in Rhode Island, and worked as a volunteer for a health NGO in Mali, West Africa, where he politely declined an offer to act as a blood-diamond mule. He values holistic personal fitness and good, honest food. Most of his free time is spent writing, reading, preparing for hunting season, hunting when it's hunting season, and otherwise pursuing an overabundance of diverse interests and passions.