Western Wildfires

Federal officials say the three firefighters killed over the weekend in a Colorado wildfire were part of a specialized crew that goes into remote areas to quickly put out new fires. Two other crew members suffered burns. The crew was overcome Saturday after deploying emergency shelters to shield themselves from fast-moving fires. The U.S. Forest Service identified the firefighters killed in Colorado as 38-year-old Emily Barker of Clinton Township, Michigan; 27-year-old Nick Hutcherson of Glendale, Arizona; and 26-year-old Sydney Watson of Warrior, Alabama. Officials say firefighting resources are beginning to be strained as the risk of more wildfires worsens this week across the West.

The deaths of three firefighters in Colorado are casting a spotlight on the Trump administration’s creation of a new federal fire agency and its revival of a previously discredited policy to stomp out all wildfires quickly. One of the firefighters worked for the U.S. Wildland Fire Service — created in January without customary congressional approval by pulling personnel from four Interior Department agencies. The consolidation has sown confusion among some firefighters about who their bosses are and what their responsibilities should be. The administration’s focus on “full suppression” of new fires is a sharp reversal from a decades-long trend toward embracing flames as a tool to burn off fuel in the forest and lessen the risk of catastrophic blazes being stoked by a warming planet.