A heavy-lift helicopter with two people on board battling a large Utah wildfire crashed on Friday and response teams were unable to reach the site. The downed helicopter was one of seven working a fire in central Utah. It crashed near Richfield, which is about 160 miles south of Salt Lake City, the Federal Aviation Administration said. Conditions were good enough for aircraft to fly when the helicopter crashed, said Tyler Hecht with the Great Basin Incident Management Team. The Sikorsky S-64 helicopter had been working in an area with steep terrain, the AP reports. It ignited another fire when it crashed.
Response teams had not been able to get to the scene of the accident by Friday evening because of the flames, but hoped to get there in the next 24 hours, officials said. "We didn't want to put them at bigger risk," Sevier County Sheriff Nathan Curtis said. "We'll get them in there as soon as we can." It was unknown if fire had overrun the crash scene, Hecht said. The Widemouth 2 fire, caused by lightning on July 27, has burned more than 160,000 acres. More than 600 firefighting personnel are battling the blaze, which has triggered evacuations and destroyed at least six structures as it burns through timber, brush, and grass.
- "Wildland firefighting is among the most dangerous jobs in the world. Today is a painful reminder of the extraordinary risks these brave men and women accept to protect us," Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said, per USA Today. "We ask all Utahns to keep them in your prayers and to give investigators and emergency responders the time and space they need."
In Oregon, an uncontained blaze killed a bulldozer operator, officials said Friday. During firefighting operations, 47-year-old Jason Ensign died Thursday while operating a dozer for a timber company. The Wrights Spring fire escalated with "unexpected and rapid growth" and cut off Ensign's escape route, the local sheriff's department said. The fire started on Wednesday in south-central Oregon, east of the town of Chiloquin. It had burned almost 14 square miles by Friday with no containment, according to the US Forest Service. Extremely hot and dry weather has caused erratic fire behavior, officials said.
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