A 44-year-old woman vacationing from Pennsylvania died while hiking the Hi-Line Trail with her two daughters and husband on the afternoon of Friday, June 14.
Sedona Fire District was dispatched at 2:08 p.m. The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office Forest Patrol arrived at the scene two miles from the Yavapai Vista Trailhead at 2:45 p.m. and SFD responders arrived at 2:52 p.m. YCSO representatives did not have an estimate for the time that the family started their hike or how long the woman was exposed to high temperatures. YCSO did not release her name.
“Another hiker responded first and attempted lifesaving measures,” a YCSO press release stated. SFD “arrived and continued lifesaving measures, but unfortunately it was too late. After interviewing her two young daughters and her husband, it appears she suffered heat exhaustion [and] was not treated fast enough.”
No other members of the family were treated.
“They could have had more water with them,” YCSO spokesman Paul Wick said.
The following day, Saturday, June 15, SFD announced that it treated five residents and visitors in the backcountry for overheating, with a majority of the incidents occurring over a mile from the trailhead.
“We do get a lot of calls for rescues in the Sedona area, and this time of year, it can be nice in the morning, and the heat just gets to you real fast,” Wick said. “Especially on the Hi-Line Trail where it’s wholly engulfed in the sun and on the side of the mountain. You just [have] to understand your limits and understand the trail.”
SFD Risk Reduction Division Chief Dori Booth said that she is working to get biometric armbands from Yavapai College to monitor firefighter heartbeat and temperature “to help create some messaging for the public in showing that impact on what these rescues, especially back-to-back, to our responders day in and day out.”
SFD is also working on creating an internal site to visualize the call volume of heat emergencies on a given trail to effectively allocate staff and resources, potentially by increasing the number of staff on duty when the temperature crosses a given threshold.
Stage 2 Restrictions
Although no wildfires are burning in Coconino County following the 100% containment of the Bravo Fire on Camp Navajo on June 12, SFD Assistant Chief Jayson Coil said during the SFD Governing Board meeting Tuesday, June 18, that fire’s expansion “indicates that the conditions are right for large fire growth.”
The Coconino National Forest announced on June 18 that it would impose Stage 2 fire restrictions starting at 8 a.m. on Friday, June 21, and Booth said that SFD would be following its lead, as SFD uses the most restrictive conditions imposed by either Yavapai or Coconino County as its basis for enforcement.
SFD will also be imposing an additional condition by requiring that smoking be limited to cleared areas of at least 15 feet.
“The good news is we have not talked about Stage 3 yet,” Booth said. “We’ll be in Stage 2 until we get enough rain that actually saturates the ground and brings up fuel moisture. We may get a big monsoonal downpour. Because it’s so much all at once, it doesn’t really do much for us until we start seeing that repetitive ground saturation to allow the vegetation to soak up the water.”
In other SFD news on Tuesday, June 18 the SFD Governing Board unanimously approved its Fiscal Year 2025 budget of $24.4 million an increase of 2.5% from the previous year’s budget of $23.8 million however the district’s the mil. rate was unaffected and remains at $2.703 which will be covered in an upcoming story.
