The U.S. Department of the Interior on Thursday released a 102-page final report on the Knowles Fire in western Colorado, in which four federal firefighters died in June. Investigators pointed to extreme fire behavior, communication problems, staffing shortages and gaps in aerial oversight, among other factors.
The tragedy occurred on June 27 near the Colorado-Utah border, west of Grand Junction. Firefighters were battling lightning-sparked fires there when flames from the larger Snyder Fire overtook them. Three people died at the scene, a fourth later died of injuries, and a fifth was injured. One of the victims was a 27-year-old resident of Glendale, Arizona. The flames jumped canyons and plateaus at a pace investigators described as “shocking.”
A helicopter was dispatched in the afternoon and was expected to reach the site in about five minutes. At 3:19 p.m., thick smoke kept it from landing. Firefighters then deployed fire shelters at the landing zone, because escaping on foot to a safety zone was no longer possible. Two people were rescued after about two and a half hours. Temperatures near the shelters exceeded 1,200°F (about 650°C). Strobe lights and cellphones helped, because regular radios did not have sufficient range inside the shelters.
The report describes an overloaded dispatch center in Grand Junction. It was short on staff, a supervisory position was vacant, and many dispatchers were still in training. At the same time, the center was tracking up to 16 aircraft and several new incidents. Because of the overload, the mandatory fire weather forecast was not broadcast over the radio. Crews often drowned each other out on the airwaves, and some arrangements were relayed by personal phones, which left no record of the conversations.
Between 2:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m., there was no aerial supervision aircraft over the Snyder and Jones fires, because strong winds (40–50 mph) prevented a replacement plane from taking off. Crews on the ground and a pilot mistakenly assumed that someone was watching the main fire and would warn them of danger. A helicopter that some people believed was working the fire was in fact operating at a different fire about 30 miles (48 km) away. Investigators wrote that “no single decision or system failure fully explains this outcome.”
The department said its findings concern communications, real-time fire observation, situational awareness in the airspace and dispatch coordination in the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service. Its chief, Brian Fennessy, previously rejected any link between the agency’s rollout and the firefighters’ deaths. The parents of one of the victims are demanding that those responsible for oversight of the operation be held accountable.
Source: Colorado Sun, CPR News
KN
