To interview Fernanda or make a request for speaking engagements, please contact Stacey Champion at Champion PR + Consulting - [email protected].
How to Fight a Wildfire: Grueling Work and Managing Risks
John Schwartz, a reporter for The New York Times, quotes Santos in his story titled “How to Fight a Wildfire: Grueling Work and Managing Risks,” about the few changes to firefighting techniques even as wildfires have changed.
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O Assunto #132: Incêndios florestais, como combater?
For the podcast “O Assunto” (in Portuguese), Santos speaks to Brazilian journalist Renata LoPrete about how to fight and adapt to the megafires of today.
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The Future of Firefighting
In an interview about our response to wildfires, Santos tells Erica Pandey of Axios’s @Work newsletter, “There’s no such thing as a fire season anymore.”
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What Does Citizenship Mean? Writer Who Married A U.S. Citizen Explores the Question
What does citizenship mean to you? There’s the legal definition of what constitutes a citizen: someone who was born in this country or someone who becomes a citizen later in life. Then there’s the thing it represents: belonging, civic duty, nationality.
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Love, Loss And A Phone Number: 3 Grieving Arizona Women Make An Unlikely Connection
When someone dies, the physical items they leave behind can hold a kind of magic for their loved ones — glasses, an old car, worn shoes. But what about something as intangible as a phone number?
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‘Smad’ and Other Words Born of Grief
In the year since my husband died, there have been many lessons — and a few new vocabulary words.
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The Western Writers of America named "The Fire Line" the winner of the 2017 Spur Award for Best First Nonfiction Book. Since 1953, Western Writers of America has promoted and honored the best in Western literature with the annual Spur Awards, given for works whose inspiration, image and literary excellence best represent the reality and spirit of the American West.
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People Magazine: "Meticulously researched and as dramatic as any thriller, Santos's account of the 2013 Arizona wildfire that killed 19 firefighters will keep you on the edge of your seat and break your heart."
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Associated Press: "In this riveting and poignant narrative, Fernanda Santos introduces the reader to a brave band of men, most of them in their 20s, who battle destructive wildfires that pose a mounting threat as developers in the West build vacation and retirement homes in areas where urban boundaries intersect with fire-prone woods and brush. Based in Prescott, Arizona, Granite Mountain was one of 107 elite Hotshot crews in the U.S. at the time of the 2013 fire and the only one run by a municipality."
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The New York Post: "It was the biggest loss of firefighters since 9/11. In her first book, Santos tells the story of the June 30, 2013, Yarnell Hill fire that killed 19 members of the elite group of men and women sent out to battle raging wildfires around the country. The tight-knit Hotshots — who lived 45 minutes form the scene of the Arizona fire — included likely heroes, such as Marines, and unlikely ones, like convicted felons. A riveting account of a hellish day and the communications breakdowns that may have contributed to the tragedy."
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The Seattle Times: "Fires, like wars, often fit a pattern in their telling. Introduce the men, map out the terrain, explain the enemy, tell what went wrong and bury the dead. Fernanda Santos takes this logical storytelling foundation and uses her deep reporting and clear writing to build a compelling story of how 19 firefighters died on June 30, 2013, in the Yarnell Hill Fire near Prescott, Ariz."
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On The Weather Channel's 23.5º with Sam Champion, Fernanda Santos talks about wildfires, climate change and 19 firefighters profiled in her book, "The Fire Line."
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In a New York Times Sunday Review op-ed, Fernanda Santos talks about the lingering grief and devastation in Yarnell, Ariz., three years after the wildfire that killed 19 firefighters, a story she tells in her book, "The Fire Line."
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The New York Times: Those who fight wildfires base what they do on a ranked list of priorities, and at the very top is life and safety. If neither can be ensured, the only sensible option is to disengage. Read more.As part of my research for a book about that fire, I took a basic wildland firefighting course, where we used green or orange shelters, not silver ones. On go, we had 25 seconds to whip them out, grasp the handles marked “right hand” and “left hand,” shake the shelters open, step inside and drop to the ground.
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Gizmodo: Gizmodo lists The Fire Line as "one of the books you desperately need to add to your to-read pile this summer."
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Colorado Public Radio: Cathy Langer, buyer for Tattered Cover Bookstores in Denver, lists "The Fire Line" as a must-read this summer.
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The Prescott Valley Tribune wrote that the public library system in Prescott Valley, Arizona, encouraged every local resident to read "The Fire Line" in the spring of 2017 as part of its Community Reads grant, which promotes reading and Arizona literature in the state.
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The Well Woman Show: Fernanda spoke to Giovanna Rossi, host of The Well Woman Show, about conquering her fears to tackle her most challenging professional project so far, the reporting and writing of her first book, "The Fire Line."
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Boston University Alumni Magazine: "The story reads as if Santos tagged along with the Granite Mountain Hotshots in the field, but in fact, she never met them. She relied heavily on interviews with their families and friends to flesh out the characters. She interviewed scientists and climate experts as well. Wildfires, she writes, are becoming more prevalent because of climate change and increased urban development. She spent part of 2014 training at the Arizona Wildfire and Incident Management Academy to learn how to fight fires."
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New Mexico in Focus: Fernanda Santos talks about how the tragic fire in Arizona that killed 19 HotShots firefighters can have lessons for battling fires in our state and throughout the southwest.
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Santa Fe New Mexican: Don’t look for definitive answers in Fernanda Santos’ book The Fire Line. That’s not why the New York Times’ Phoenix bureau chief wrote about the devastating loss of 19 highly trained firefighters in Yarnell, Arizona, on June 30, 2013. She wasn’t looking for someone to blame but rather to understand more about these men and the thousands of other wild-land firefighters who routinely risk their lives to protect people and property and places with cultural or historic value. Santos covered the story for her newspaper, and then she read the official report that the multi-agency Serious Accident Investigation Team released three months later. The book, her first, shares highlights from that probe, including a detailed timeline of events.
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KJZZ's The Show: In her new book "The Fire Line: The Story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots and One of the Deadliest Days in American Firefighting," Fernanda Santos of The New York Times writes about what happened with the fire, the men who attempted to fight it and their surviving family members.
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Here & Now: "Fernanda Santos writes about the men who died and provides a detailed account of what happened that day in her new book, “The Fire Line: The Story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots and One of the Deadliest Days in American Firefighting.” Looking ahead following this tragedy, Santos told Here & Now’s Peter O’Dowd that unless there is a change in how we manage forests and prevent fires, more firefighters will be in danger."
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Cronkite News: While they were presenting the different theories they had as to why they left the black, which was an area the fire had already burned at the top of a ridge and came down to a canyon to an area that was still covered with unburned vegetation, I became intrigued by this chain-link fence that they put around the area where they had deployed their shelters. The space was so small and I began asking myself what it was about these men that led them to stay together when they were faced with this wall of 40-, 50-foot high flames coming their way. Why is it that none of them ran? That was the question that I set out to answer when I decided to write this book.
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The Oregonian: The wildfire, sparked by a lightning strike, raged for more than 10 days, scorched more than 8,400 acres and destroyed 129 buildings. Among the journalists who covered it was Fernanda Santos, The New York Times' Phoenix bureau chief. Santos' new book, "The Fire Line: The Story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots and One of the Deadliest Days in American Firefighting" (Flatiron Books, 273 pages, $25.99), focuses on the men sent to battle the blaze: Percin, squad boss Robert Caldwell, Superintendent Eric Marsh, Captain Jesse Steed and 16 more. Nineteen of the 20 Hotshots died – the worst death toll from a U.S. wildfire since 1933.
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ABC15: Make no mistake “The Fire Line” is not a blame game, but rather an intimate portrait of this unique crew and the dangerous, often mysterious job they loved so much. “Rest assured that between that town and the flames there are 20 men and women,” said Santos. “When you see that plane on TV I want people to think about it, these are our kids out there.”
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The Daily Courier: Each member of the crew had a role to play – a point that Santos said helped her to understand her original question: Why did they stay together, with none of the 19 trying to run to safety on his own? After getting to know the men and their roles, she said, “It made sense that they would stay together at the last moment. Everyone has a role, and I think it was pretty clear that if they were going to make it, they had to stay together.” - The Daily Courier of Prescott, Ariz., the Granite Mountain Hotshots's hometown.
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CBS5: Santos covered the fire for the Times and said it’s a story she fell in love with from the beginning -- despite the horrible outcome -- because of the people involved. "I became very curious about these 19 firefighters," Santos said. "I wanted to know who they were; what kind of life did they live. Why did they fight fire? What was it about wildfires?”
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Boston University: “A lot of people like to say that writing a book is like giving birth,” New York Times Phoenix bureau chief Fernanda Santos noted during a breakout session at this past weekend’s College of Communication Power of Narrative conference. The first-time book author continued, “I’ve done both—it’s a lot easier to give birth.”
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