A helicopter dispatched to rescue five federal firefighters trapped by a rapidly growing wildfire in western Colorado was unable to land because of heavy smoke, according to a preliminary federal report released Thursday on the June burnover that killed four crew members.
Emily Barker, 38, of Clinton Township, Michigan; Nick Hutcherson, 27, of Glendale, Arizona; and Sydney Watson, 27, of Warrior, Alabama, were killed June 27 after being overtaken by rapidly spreading flames while battling lightning-caused wildfires near the Colorado-Utah border west of Grand Junction.
Nathan Matthews, 43, of Lincoln, Nebraska, later died from injuries suffered in the burnover. A fifth firefighter was also injured.
Barker, Watson and Matthews were part of the Rifle Helitack team.
The brief, two-page report provides the most detailed public account yet of the events leading up to the tragedy, though a “serious accident investigation team” is still working to determine exactly what happened. The deaths have prompted calls from lawmakers, including Colorado U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, for a swift review of the decisions and circumstances that led to the burnover.
A timeline released by the U.S. Wildland Fire Service and U.S. Forest Service shows conditions deteriorated rapidly in the hours after firefighters were inserted into remote terrain at 9:36 a.m. to battle the Knowles and Gore fires southwest of Loma.
The fires were burning about 8 miles east of two other fires, known as the Snyder and Jones fires.
According to the report, satellite imagery showed lightning ignited another fire roughly three-quarters of a mile northeast of the Snyder fire between 12:32 p.m. and 1 p.m. Fire managers initially believed the new ignition was a spot fire from the Snyder fire.
As the new fire grew, crews began discussing a helicopter extraction at 2:56 p.m. Two minutes later, firefighters reported the fire near their location. A helicopter was dispatched at 3:08 p.m. with an estimated arrival time of five minutes, but heavy smoke prevented it from landing at 3:19 p.m. Firefighters then deployed their emergency fire shelters.
Flames spread under extreme fire conditions, including very dry fuels, west-southwest winds gusting up to 50 mph and, based on a tool used to measure the potential for extreme fire intensity, a burning index in the 94th to 99th percentiles, the report said.
The fires merged to form what was referred to as the Snyder fire, which grew to more than 30,000 acres as it raced across drought-parched land west of Fruita and Grand Junction in the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area.
Strong winds kept the smoke at ground level, reducing visibility to near zero at the deployment site, the report said.
Crews started to get initial containment on the Snyder fire June 30.
On the Senate floor Thursday, Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democrat, called for a “swift and thorough” investigation into the deaths, including whether the administration’s recent transition to the U.S. Wildland Fire Service played any role.
“This isn’t about playing politics or gotcha, trying to find blame. With wildfires still raging across Colorado, we can’t afford to wait months and months to learn lessons that could save lives right now,” Hickenlooper said.
“The loss of one firefighter is felt by everyone,” he said, describing Colorado’s firefighting community as tightly knit. “The loss of four is quite simply unimaginable. So we have to get to the bottom of what happened and make sure that we prevent a repeat tragedy.”