We want answers’: Family of firefighter killed near Utah-Colorado border says report isn’t enough

Lisa Hutcherson trekked to a patch of sandy desert earlier this year where a raging wildfire had overtaken her 27-year-old son Nick and his five-member crew.

As she surveyed the vast landscape, one thing was clear: He’d had no escape as whipping winds pushed the flames toward him near the Utah-Colorado border in June. 

“I stood where Nick stood,” Hutcherson said Thursday in a written statement. “I saw the terrain. I saw no viable way out on the ground.” 

What is not clear now is who exactly is responsible for her son’s death, why certain evidence went missing and what will change as a result of the deadliest firefighting tragedy in more than a decade, she said. 

Hutcherson and her husband say other questions remain unanswered by an investigation the U.S. Department of the Interior released Thursday into the June 27 burnover incident. 

Their son and three other members of his specialized “helitack” crew died after deploying their emergency shelters: Emily Barker, 38; Nathan Matthews, 43; and Sydney Watson, 27.

Matthews succumbed to his burn injuries roughly a month after the incident. Another team member was injured but survived.  

Hutcherson’s parents said they also want to know whether “pressure for aggressive suppression, staffing shortages and fragmented oversight contributed to the disaster.” Advocates have similarly raised alarm about turnover in leadership at wildland firefighting agencies and a new aggressive strategy to stamp out fires early and quickly. 

The Interior Department did not respond to a request for comment.

After firefighting deaths, advocates alarmed by ‘deepening wildfire crisis,’ agencies’ strategies

Its 100-page report out Thursday paints a picture of overstretched dispatchers, extraordinarily dry and windy conditions, flawed radio systems, and gaps in communication that left crews on neighboring fires uninformed of each other’s locations. 

“No single decision or system failure fully explains the outcome,” the report states. “Instead, the events reveal the cumulative effects of known limitations operating under extraordinary tempo and conditions.

In one lapse, the report says, Hutcherson and his crew were operating “under the false mental model that Air Attack was actively monitoring the main fire and would warn them if it posed an imminent threat.” 

In reality, severe winds kept aircraft grounded, though “helitack leadership” and a helicopter pilot were under the same impression as the crew. 

“My son depended on the people responsible for tracking the fire threatening him and making the decisions needed to keep him safe,” Lisa Hutcherson said in the statement. “We want answers, and we want accountability.”

The Hutchersons are demanding details of how evidence in the case was lost, who was in charge of it and how it shaped the findings.  

In the report, investigators documented a “failure” to follow standard evidence procedures that ended with contamination and the loss of deployed fire shelters. But the report does not say who was involved. 

In a statement, the family said investigators recounted to them that three of the shelters had gone to a “disposal site,” while the two others were recovered. They said it means they can’t know if their son had a faulty or recalled shelter and whether that may have played a role in his death.

In late June, the spate of fires coincided with chronic understaffing and a high ratio of trainees at the dispatch center in Grand Junction, the report says. Dispatchers told investigators they didn’t transmit a mandatory morning fire weather broadcast that day because they couldn’t safely cut into the radio traffic. 

As the day went on, the report says, extremely dry conditions and high winds pushed the combined Snyder and Dolores fires more than 7 miles across deep canyons in less than three hours, “catching experienced personnel completely by surprise.” 

The geography also obscured the danger, with a 200-foot rock dome and adjacent cliffs blocking their view of the approaching fire. As smoke closed in and the fire raced toward them, “the crew’s decision window closed, leaving helicopter extraction impossible and forcing an immediate shelter deployment.” 

Investigators spoke with the crew’s surviving member, among a wider array of firefighters, managers and others. They also reviewed sources including dispatch logs, materials recovered from the entrapment site, photos and videos, and radio transmissions. 

The Hutcherson family wants the federal government to make those materials public, saying they want a full accounting of what happened. 

“Telling us how the fire reached our son does not answer why he was still there,” Ron Hutcherson said. 

Known as “Hutch” to friends on his crew, Nick Hutcherson was a Navy veteran from Arizona who’d begun his firefighting career five years earlier, loved Muay Thai and planned to become a physical therapist, his family said. 

His parents said they want his legacy to help protect today’s firefighters and those to follow.