Three firefighters killed in Colorado-Utah wildfire
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- Three firefighters were killed and two burned and hospitalized when flames overran their federal response crew on the Knowles and Gore fires Saturday — a 'burnover' in which a fire spreads so rapidly it cuts off escape routes, the US Wildland Fire Service said.
- The five crew members were from the US Wildland Fire Service and the US Forest Service, both federal agencies that manage public lands; the wildland service was only established in January 2025 under the Department of the Interior to streamline firefighting across public lands.
- The Knowles and Gore fires merged with other blazes into the Snyder Mesa fire, which had burned roughly 28,000 acres as of Saturday according to Governor Jared Polis's office.
- Governor Jared Polis declared a state of emergency for Colorado, authorizing the National Guard to join the response, and said he was 'devastated about the loss of three heroic firefighters who died in the line of duty in Western Colorado.'
- Utah's Cottonwood Fire, the largest of eleven active blazes in the state, covered over 93,000 acres and was 0% contained as of Sunday; Governor Spencer Cox issued an emergency order banning fireworks ahead of the July 4th weekend.
- Western US fire conditions have been fueled by warmer winters and high winds, with scientists cited in the reporting attributing increasingly intense and frequent wildfires to the combined effects of land use and climate change.
Why it matters: Three firefighters from a federal service only stood up in January 2025 died in the line of duty on the same day Utah's largest active blaze, the Cottonwood Fire, reached 93,000 acres with zero containment. With both Colorado and Utah governors declaring emergencies and a July 4th fireworks ban already in place, the losses land on a federal firefighting structure still in its first year of operation during a worsening western fire season.
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