BEAVER, Utah (AP) — The three firefighters killed over the weekend in wildfires along the Colorado-Utah border were part of a crew that goes into remote areas to quickly put out new fires, federal officials said Monday.
The three were killed and two others suffered burns when they were overcome Saturday by flames after deploying emergency shelters to shield themselves from fast-moving fires.
Wildfires have erupted over the past week across the West, fueled by months of dry weather and a record lack of snow this past winter in some places. Wildfire experts have been warning for months that extreme fire dangers are likely this summer.
With more than two dozen large fires burning across the U.S., almost 8,000 wildland firefighters and dozens of firefighting helicopters have been deployed. About half of the largest blazes are in Alaska while the rest are mostly in Western states.
So far this year, wildfires have burned more than 4,600 square miles (11,900 square kilometers) — the most since 2022.
The U.S. Forest Service identified the firefighters killed as Emily Barker, 38, of Clinton Township, Michigan; Nick Hutcherson, 27 of Glendale, Arizona; and Sydney Watson, 26, of Warrior, Alabama.
They were assigned to a Helitack crew that can be dropped into remote areas by helicopters and whose mission is to prevent new fires from growing into out-of-control blazes. But it can be extremely dangerous, often taking place in areas where fires are rapidly expanding.
The weekend deaths came almost exactly 13 years after a crew of 19 wildland firefighters were killed when they were trapped in a brush-choked box canyon near Yarnell, Arizona.
Like Saturday’s victims, the men killed in Arizona in June 2013 were members of a specialized firefighting crew who had tried to deploy emergency shelters meant to shield them from flames and heat.
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