3 firefighters killed, 2 injured in Colorado-Utah wildfire burnover

Three federal firefighters were killed and two others were injured Saturday while crews battled wildfires near the Colorado-Utah state line, a deadly burnover that overtook personnel and equipment with no clear escape route. The firefighters had been working in an interagency response to the Knowles and Gore fires when flames surrounded them.

The U.S. Wildland Fire Service said the crew deployed emergency shelters before being overrun. The two injured firefighters were being treated for burn injuries, and officials withheld their names pending notification of next of kin. The U.S. Department of the Interior described the incident as a burnover, one of the most dangerous scenarios in wildland firefighting because fire can move faster than crews can retreat.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis declared an emergency Saturday and authorized the Colorado National Guard to help battle the fires. His office said the Jones, Snyder Mesa and Knowles fires merged into the Snyder Mesa Fire, which had burned more than 28,000 acres as it spread through rugged country near the border. Polis called the deaths a loss of three heroic firefighters in Western Colorado.

The fatal incident came as fire danger remained elevated across Colorado’s Western Slope. The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for parts of the region Sunday because of extreme wildfire conditions, and state officials pointed to record-low snowpack and Colorado’s warmest winter on record as major contributors to the risk. Hot, dry, windy weather was fueling multiple fires across the West, stretching crews and aircraft across a broad and volatile fire scene.

The danger was not limited to Colorado. In southwest Utah, the Cottonwood Fire grew to more than 144 square miles and destroyed part of a ski resort and summer cabins, underscoring how quickly the regional fire outbreak had expanded across the Four Corners area. With one blaze after another merging, growing and pushing into steep terrain, the latest deaths added a stark measure of how lethal the job has become when crews are sent into fires behaving beyond normal containment lines.