Three firefighters killed as Snyder Fire rages on Utah-Colorado border

Three firefighters were killed and two others were injured Saturday while crews fought the Snyder Fire on the Utah-Colorado border, a burnover that forced emergency shelters and ended with the fallen responders’ bodies flown by helicopter to a Colorado airport for transfer to the coroner’s office. Their names were being withheld until families were notified.

The fire began as the Snyder Mesa Fire in Grand County, Utah, before crossing into Colorado and merging with the Jones and Knowles fires. By Sunday, it had burned about 28,000 acres and remained 0% contained.

Grand Junction hit 93 degrees Fahrenheit, and wind gusts reached 44 mph as the National Weather Service warned that critical fire weather was still gripping the region. The firefighters who died were part of an interagency response involving the U.S. Wildland Fire Service, the U.S. Forest Service and other public-land crews as the flames moved through dry country.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis declared a disaster emergency and authorized the Colorado National Guard to assist with the response. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox had already declared a state of emergency, then ordered temporary statewide fireworks restrictions on June 25 through July 5.

Ninety-four percent of the state remained in severe or extreme drought, and human activity had caused at least 75% of wildfires this season. The state was already contending with hundreds of fires and tens of thousands of acres burned in June alone, while the Cottonwood Fire in Utah’s Paiute and Beaver counties had grown to about 92,254 acres with no containment.

Cox praised crews for “several miraculous stops and saves.”