By MES Dispatch Staff
The Briefing
- A U.S. Department of the Interior serious accident investigation released Thursday found extreme fire behavior, communication failures, understaffed dispatch centers and aging radio equipment all contributed to the deaths of four firefighters on Colorado’s Western Slope.
- Firefighters Emily Barker, Nick Hutcherson, Nathan Matthews and Sydney Watson died after the Snyder fire overtook them June 27 near the Utah border; Matthews died of his injuries July 24.
- A fifth firefighter survived and is still recovering.
- Investigators found dispatch centers in Grand Junction, Colo., and Moab, Utah, were largely staffed by trainees, radios often failed and the centers used incompatible computer systems.
- The report also cited gaps in aircraft monitoring, no one tracking crew locations and winds of up to 50 mph that grounded air tankers.
WASHINGTON — A federal investigation released Thursday concluded that extreme fire behavior, communication breakdowns and understaffed, poorly equipped dispatch centers contributed to the deaths of four firefighters overtaken by a wildfire in western Colorado this summer, the Estes Park Trail-Gazette reported.
Emily Barker, Nick Hutcherson, Nathan Matthews and Sydney Watson died after the Snyder fire exploded across more than seven miles of canyon terrain near the Utah border in about three hours on June 27. Three died in their protective shelters. Matthews and a fifth firefighter, who has not been publicly identified, survived the entrapment; Matthews died July 24 at the UC Health Burn Center, and the fifth firefighter is still recovering. The Snyder fire began that morning as three separate fires on 60 acres, then merged and grew to about 28,000 acres, or nearly 44 square miles.
The five firefighters were responding to two smaller fires, the Gore and Knowles fires, in McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area. The report said rocky, rolling terrain blocked their view of the Snyder fire. Winds up to 50 mph pushed it toward them and kept air tankers from taking off from the Grand Junction airport. Investigators found no one was assigned to track crew locations, and the group and its superintendent assumed aircraft were watching the larger fire. A superintendent who wanted to fly over the fire decided against it to avoid interfering with other aircraft, even though none were operating nearby. “No single decision or system failure fully explains the outcome,” investigators wrote.
Dispatch centers in Grand Junction and Moab were largely staffed by trainees, the report found. Radio equipment frequently failed, crews resorted to personal cell phones, and dispatchers had to log in and out of two incompatible computer systems during the crisis. The centers also disagreed over who was responsible for tasks such as ordering and tracking aircraft. Investigators wrote that old equipment, outages and software crashes “severely compromised official command channels.”
At 2:40 p.m., the superintendent asked Barker and Watson whether they were comfortable with conditions, and both said they wanted to keep working. Ten minutes later, a helicopter pilot who had seen the growing smoke and supervisors began planning to extract the crew. Over the next half hour, smoke grew too thick for the helicopter to land. At 3:19 p.m., Barker lost contact with the pilot while discussing a landing, and nine seconds later the five firefighters were heard deploying their shelters. Most did not have time to put on gloves, roll down their sleeves or clear brush. One survivor recalled that Barker offered their own shelter when the survivor struggled to deploy theirs. The firefighters remained in the shelters for more than two hours before a rescue helicopter could land.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum urged firefighters nationwide to apply the report’s lessons in honor of the four who died.