Three firefighters killed in Colorado-Utah border wildfire burnover

Three firefighters were killed and two others were injured in a burnover at the Knowles and Gore fires near the Colorado-Utah border. The firefighters were assigned to the two fires when the incident occurred on Saturday, June 28, 2026.

The Knowles Fire was about one-tenth of an acre and the Gore Fire about two-tenths of an acre. Even at that scale, the terrain at the state line can force crews into fast-moving, hard-to-read conditions, where shifting winds, slope and rapidly changing fire behavior can turn a routine response into a deadly one. Officials have not yet released details on what triggered the burnover.

In January 2026, the Interior Department announced steps to establish the U.S. Wildland Fire Service, a service responsible for wildfire response, risk mitigation and burned-area rehabilitation across more than 500 million acres of Interior-administered and tribal lands. Interior’s new agency and the U.S. Forest Service focused on supporting the firefighters’ families, friends and colleagues during the aftermath of the fatality.

Colorado fire response is an interagency operation, with federal, state and local partners working together across overlapping jurisdictions. In the Colorado-Utah border country, land management responsibilities are shared across agencies, and Utah and Colorado each maintain wildfire information systems and joint incident resources for major fires. In Colorado, fire season is typically May through September, when dry fuels, wind and sudden weather changes can intensify the danger for crews in the field.

Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control data show that all 20 of the state’s 20 largest wildfires have occurred since 2002, 17 of the top 20 since 2012 and 11 of the top 20 since 2018.