 Post led more than 40 firefighters , consisting of USFS , CCC , and BPR employees , up the ridge seeking an opening in the forest to take refuge . Spot fires blew ahead of Post and his crews preventing them from advancing further up the ridge , but they found a rocky outcropping and laid prone on the ground as the fire engulfed them . Crammed together on the outcropping , Post 's men moved around to avoid the flames and USFS employee Paul Tyrrell ( who later died ) used his own body to keep several CCC firefighters from panicking and to shield them from the fire . The flames and heat nevertheless drove five firefighters to charge the flames in an attempt to escape to the other side of the firefront , but only one of them survived . A total of nine firefighters were killed on the fire lines and six more died later from their burns , while another 38 suffered various injuries . The Blackwater fire is tied for fourth involving the greatest loss of life by firefighters on a wildfire in U.S. history . It killed more professional wildland firefighters in the U.S. than any other in the 103 years between the Great Fire of 1910 and the Yarnell Hill Fire in 2013 . 
