Understaffing, communication failures contributed to deaths of 4 firefighters trapped in western Colorado inferno, report finds

Strained communications, incomplete situational awareness, understaffing and gaps in aerial supervision were among the issues that contributed to the deaths of four federal firefighters who became trapped by a rapidly growing wildfire in western Colorado in June, federal investigators found.

The final report on the Knowles fire, released Thursday by the Department of Interior, comes as parents of one of the killed firefighters demanded more accountability in “preventable failures of leadership and oversight” that they say led to his death.

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 fires 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 102-page federal report details the extraordinary fire behavior, communication failures and staffing issues as the firefighters engaged in the initial attack of the Knowles fire. The firefighters were overtaken by the larger Snyder fire, which jumped across canyon and mesa terrain at a speed described as “shocking” and “unfathomable.”

A helicopter was dispatched to rescue the trapped firefighters but was unable to land because of heavy smoke.

The report’s findings show areas where the newly created U.S. Wildland Fire Service can improve communications, real-time fire observations, airspace awareness, dispatch coordination and situation awareness, the U.S. Department of Interior said in releasing the report.

U.S. Wildland Fire Service Chief Brian Fennessy previously denied any connection between the rollout of the new agency and the firefighters’ fatalities and said he was confident in the agency’s ability to provide a “unified response” to the threat of wildfires. 

“This report is the culmination of a thorough methodical, and rigorous examination of this tragic event, and it provides insights into the contributing factors that can help improve the safety of firefighters across the wildland fire community,” Fennessy said Thursday in a statement. 

Chronic understaffing, a vacant manager position and a high proportion of trainee dispatchers left Grand Junction Interagency Dispatch Center reliant on less-trained employees during an extraordinary surge in workload, investigators wrote.

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 stated.

Because of congested radio communications and “workload strain,” dispatchers felt they were unable to transmit the mandatory scheduled fire weather broadcast.

The vacancies contributed to the communication issues, the report said. 

Dispatchers in Utah were forced to repeatedly log in and out of separate radio configuration files and databases to track resources and process orders, “effectively doubling the workload for a reduced staff.”

Field personnel frequently stepped on one another’s radio traffic without knowing their transmissions failed, according to the report. To bypass the technical barriers, firefighters, helitack managers and dispatchers used personal cellphones, which allowed tasks to continue but created “unrecorded information silos.” 

There was also a lack of situational awareness among the staff assigned to the several fires that ignited in close proximity. 

“A lack of real-time centralized resource tracking prevented leadership and initial attack crews from maintaining a shared common operating picture across adjacent incidents,” investigators wrote.

This is a developing story that will be updated.