Pat McCarty, a Prescott firefighter who also served as technical advisor, says everyone on set felt that sense of duty. Telling the story right was essential to the filmmakers, who based the movie on an emotional article written by Sean Flynn for GQ.

“When I see some of their family members I hope they think ‘My son was like that.’ ‘My husband carried himself in that way, he talked about love and compassion and helping others like that,'” he says. McDonough, who was the newest member of the group at the time of the tragedy, has been recovering from PTSD and depression since losing the men he calls “brothers.” He has found healing by working with nonprofits helping members of the fire service, and says he strives to carry on the values he saw in his teammates. “I think the most important thing, and they nailed it, was the camaraderie.” “I’m really blown away by such an amazing job they did,” says McDonough, now 25, who served as an advisor to the filmmakers and cast. The shelters were ultimately useless that day against direct contact with the massive inferno. When members of the Blue Ridge team finally found the bodies, they saw that some of the Granite Mountain team had deployed fire shelters designed to protect wildland firefighters from small flames as a last resort. Members of another hotshot team, the Blue Ridge Hotshots, tried to save the trapped Granite Mountain crew, but were pushed back by the fire’s immense heat. The wildfire was ignited by lightning on June 28, 2013, and it quickly spread over 8,300 acres through a combination of strong winds, high temperatures and dry conditions caused by drought. Only the Bravetells the story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a highly trained team of wildland firefighters that lost 19 of its 20 members when they became entrapped in the Yarnell Hill blaze in Arizona on June 30, 2013. As Northern California prepares to recover from a devastating series of wildfires, the heroic and poignant true story behind one of the worst firefighter tragedies in U.S.

Only the brave movie theater