Five federal firefighters were caught in a burnover incident Saturday, June 27, while working on Colorado fires in western COLORADO. Two were being treated for burn injuries, and three did not survive.
The firefighters were assigned to the Knowles and Gore fires near the Colorado-Utah border, where the wildfire danger had been intensifying across the nation. The identities of the U.S. Wildland Fire Service and U.S. Forest Service firefighters were being withheld while notifications were made.
The burnover happened fast enough to overwhelm the crew before escape was possible, but officials did not say what caused it. That missing detail matters because the incident left one of the most serious outcomes possible for a wildfire assignment: injuries to some firefighters and deaths to others in the same event.
The U.S. Wildland Fire Service said it was taking immediate steps to reduce firefighter exposure to smoke and other harmful contaminants, while the Department of the Interior urged the public to keep drones away from wildfires as activity intensified. For the families waiting for names, the next update will be the one that finally puts identities to the loss.
