Investigation says understaffing and unexpected fire behavior led to firefighter deaths

Unexpected fire behavior, chronic understaffing, a lack of highly trained employees and a new policy to quash fires quickly were among the factors that contributed to the deaths of four helitack firefighters as they battled a blaze in western Colorado in June, according to a report released by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The firefighters, working for the U.S. Forest Service and the newly created U.S. Wildland Fire Service, were part of an interagency response to the Knowles fire that merged with others to form the Snyder Fire on the Colorado/Utah border. The Rifle Helitack crew had been dropped in a remote area to work on a fire line, but became trapped when strong winds blew the fires in their direction and overtook them.

Their deaths came after the Trump administration revived a previously discredited policy to stomp out all wildfires quickly. Decisions on how to fight the Knowles fire were driven by the desire to prevent the spread of cheatgrass and protect sage-grouse habitat and a downwind community, the report said.

These factors “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 were killed at the scene while Nathan Matthews sustained burn injuries and died on July 24. A fifth firefighter on the team sustained burn injuries but survived.

Ron and Lisa Hutcherson, Nick's parents, said the crew should not have been sent out ahead of the fire because dangerous winds were in the forecast. After meeting with investigators and visiting the site, they said they believe the deaths were preventable and were caused by a failure of 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 detailed the circumstances that led to the decision to send out the helitack team and the many problems that led to their deaths.

Multiple lightning fires ignited on June 27 in Colorado's Black Ridge Canyon Wilderness. The region was experiencing extreme drought conditions, and the winds were picking up.

An incident team orchestrated coverage of the various fires by calling in aircraft and crews. At one point, the official in charge ordered all aircraft to the Jones fire, but constant high winds challenged all pilots that day, with many saying it was the most difficult flying of their careers, the report said.

By the early afternoon, communication systems broke down, with many trainee dispatchers trying to coordinate operations. There was also confusion over who would track 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.”

The incident commanders on the Snyder and Jones fires did not have clear information about the location of the firefighters on the Knowles and Gore fires to the east, the report said.

“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.

A large fire about eight miles to the west of the helitack crew was observed three and a half hours before the entrapment, the report said. In less than three hours, the fire ran over complex terrain and reached the five firefighters, who were forced to deploy fire shelters, because a helicopter was unable to reach 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 readout of the report, they said. The review described a failure of lookouts, communications, escape routes and safety zones, they said.

An aging mobile radio system and software crashes compromised official channels during critical operations, the family was told. Overlapping transmissions and confused radio traffic forced firefighters to use cellphones to communicate.

The Knowles fire was in a remote location, the family said, so the 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 problem can be traced back to the Trump administration's full-suppression policy, which has prompted crews across the country to take unreasonable 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.”