Two firefighters die battling fast-moving Colorado-Utah border wildfire

Three firefighters died Saturday while battling the Snyder Fire along the Colorado-Utah border, after flames overran them in a burnover that also left two other firefighters with burn injuries. Their names were being withheld while families were notified, and their bodies were flown by helicopter to a Colorado airport before soot-covered colleagues drove them to the coroner’s office.

The firefighters had deployed emergency shelters as the fire behavior turned extreme in Mesa County, Colorado. The blaze had merged from the Knowles and Gore fires into what officials called the Snyder Fire, also referred to in some reports as the Snyder Mesa Fire after it began in east Utah’s Grand County and crossed into Colorado. At the time of the reports, the fire had burned about 28,000 acres and was 0% contained.

The crew was part of an interagency response involving the U.S. Wildland Fire Service and the U.S. Forest Service. The U.S. Wildland Fire Service, created earlier this year to streamline firefighting and fire reduction across public lands, said it was supporting the firefighters’ families, friends and crewmates. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis declared an emergency and authorized the National Guard to help as the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office urged evacuations and the Bureau of Land Management closed nearby public lands because of the fire’s rapid spread and hazardous conditions.

Weather across the region was punishing. Grand Junction reached 93 degrees Fahrenheit, and winds gusted to 44 mph as the National Weather Service posted red flag warnings for parts of Colorado’s Western Slope. Those conditions helped turn a fast-moving border fire into a deadly one, with crews facing hot, windy weather that made containment difficult and every shift more dangerous.

The Snyder Fire was not the only major blaze straining crews. The Cottonwood Fire in Utah had grown to more than 144 square miles and damaged part of a ski resort and summer cabins, underscoring how little margin remains in a Southwest already drying out after a warm winter and a thin snow year. Record-low snowpack has left Utah and Colorado exposed earlier than usual, and the season is already testing fire crews, local officials and mountain communities with larger evacuations, longer shifts and more volatile fire behavior.