The deaths of three U.S. government firefighters in a Colorado wildfire are casting a spotlight on the Trump administration's creation of a new federal fire service and its revival of a previously discredited policy to stomp out all wildfires quickly.
One of the killed firefighters worked for the U.S. Wildland Fire Service, established this year without customary congressional approval by drawing personnel from four agencies within the Interior Department. The victims were part of an elite, helicopter-based crew that got trapped Saturday in a fast-growing wildfire near the Utah border as they attacked the blaze on the ground.
Five firefighters, including the ones who died, tried to shield themselves by deploying tentlike emergency shelters as flames overran their position. The two survivors were hospitalized with burn injuries.
The consolidation of thousands of personnel into the fire service has sown confusion among some firefighters about who their bosses are and what their responsibilities should be, according to former government officials.
And the administration's focus on "full suppression" of new fires marks a sharp reversal from a decades-long trend toward embracing flames as a tool — to burn off old vegetation and growth that acts like fuel and lessen the risk of catastrophic blazes being stoked by a warming planet.