Unpredictable fire behavior, chronic staffing shortages, limited access to highly trained personnel and a policy focused on rapidly suppressing wildfires all contributed to the deaths of four helitack firefighters in western Colorado in June, according to a U.S. Department of the Interior report.
The firefighters, who worked for the U.S. Forest Service and the newly established U.S. Wildland Fire Service, were part of a multiagency response to the Knowles fire. That blaze later merged with others to create the Snyder Fire along the Colorado-Utah border. The Rifle Helitack crew had been flown into a remote area to work on the fire line when powerful winds shifted the flames toward them and ultimately overran their position.
The deaths followed the Trump administration’s revival of a previously discredited policy aimed at extinguishing wildfires as quickly as possible. According to the report, decisions about the Knowles fire were influenced by concerns over the spread of cheatgrass, the protection of sage-grouse habitat and the safety of a community downwind.
Those concerns “established an organizational posture to aggressively suppress new starts while small,” the report said. “This policy framing drove the decision to insert helitack firefighters onto small wilderness starts on a day with extreme fire weather conditions forecast.”
Emily Barker, Nick Hutcherson and Sydney Watson died at the scene. Nathan Matthews suffered burn injuries and died July 24. A fifth firefighter was also burned but survived.
Ron and Lisa Hutcherson, Nick’s parents, said the crew should not have been sent ahead of the fire with dangerous winds in the forecast. After meeting with investigators and visiting the site, they said they believe the deaths could have been prevented and resulted from failures in leadership and oversight.
“Telling us how the fire reached our son does not answer why he was still there,” Ron Hutcherson said in an email to The Associated Press. “Who was watching the bigger picture? Who was responsible for bringing those firefighters home while there was still time?”
Lisa Hutcherson added: “My son depended on the people responsible for tracking the fire threatening him and making the decisions needed to keep him safe. We want answers, and we want accountability.”
Communication breakdowns with trainees at the helm
The Serious Accident Investigation report outlined the circumstances behind the decision to deploy the helitack crew, as well as the chain of failures that preceded the firefighters’ deaths.
Several lightning-caused fires ignited June 27 in Colorado’s Black Ridge Canyon Wilderness. The area was in the grip of extreme drought, while winds were intensifying.
An incident management team coordinated the response by bringing in aircraft and crews to cover the separate fires. At one point, the official overseeing the operation directed all aircraft to the Jones fire. But persistent high winds made flying difficult, and several pilots described the conditions as the most challenging of their careers, the report said.
By early afternoon, communications had begun to fail as numerous trainee dispatchers tried to manage the operation. Officials were also unclear about who was responsible for tracking aircraft.
“Dispatchers simultaneously tracked up to 16 active aircraft, three emerging incidents, multiple new starts, county river evacuations, and non-stop media inquiries, leading to severe cognitive task saturation,” the report said. “Due to constant radio congestion and workload strain, dispatchers felt they were unable to transmit the mandatory scheduled 1000 Fire Weather Forecast broadcast across the zone.”
Commanders managing the Snyder and Jones fires lacked a clear understanding of where firefighters were positioned on the Knowles and Gore fires to the east, according to the report.
“Because no operational role was assigned to continuously map personnel location against the emerging fires’ trajectories, overhead did not recognize that firefighters were positioned directly in the fire’s line of advance,” the report said.
Investigators said a large fire roughly eight miles west of the helitack crew was spotted three and a half hours before the entrapment. In under three hours, the fire moved across difficult terrain and reached the five firefighters. They were forced to deploy fire shelters after a helicopter could not get to them in time.
Family wants to know why the crew was exposed to deteriorating conditions
The Hutcherson family met with fire investigators in Grand Junction on Oct. 26 for a three-hour official briefing on the report, they said. The presentation described failures involving lookouts, communications, escape routes and safety zones, according to the family.
The family was told that an aging mobile radio system and software crashes disrupted official communications during critical moments. Overlapping transmissions and confusing radio traffic eventually forced firefighters to rely on cellphones.
Because the Knowles fire was burning in a remote area, the family said, a central question remains: “What justified keeping this crew exposed as communications, observation, and extraction options deteriorated?”
Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of the nonprofit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, said the problems stemmed in part from the Trump administration’s full-suppression policy. He said the approach has encouraged firefighting crews nationwide to take unacceptable risks.
“It was outrageous to have a full-suppression policy on a lightning-caused fire in the wilderness to prevent the spread of cheatgrass,” Ingalsbee said. “The policy driving this aggressive attack of all fires is an obsolete paradigm that is just humanly or ecologically unsustainable. And unfortunately this crew paid the ultimate price, ultimate sacrifice.”
