Firefighting helicopter crashes in Utah wildfire, killing pilot and crew member

A firefighting helicopter plummeted into rugged terrain near Richfield, Utah on Friday morning, killing both the pilot and a crew member aboard. The Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane, a heavy-lift aircraft operated by Helicopter Transport Services under contract with the U.S. Forest Service, went down around 10 a.m. local time in the Three Creeks Reservoir area, close to the southeastern edge of the Widemouth 2 fire that has consumed much of central Utah.

The National Interagency Fire Center confirmed the deaths more than a day later, on Saturday, after rescue teams finally reached the wreckage. Extreme fire conditions and the steep, unforgiving landscape had kept responders from the crash site until then. The two crew members were pronounced fatally injured at the scene. Their names were not released. The center extended formal condolences to the families and friends of the deceased.

The Widemouth 2 fire itself began on July 27 when lightning struck Fishlake National Forest. In the two weeks since ignition, it has burned more than 111,000 acres—roughly 45,000 hectares—and is now tracking to become Utah's largest wildfire of the year. As of Saturday, crews had contained only 24 percent of the blaze. The fire was exhibiting extreme behavior: crowning, where flames leap from treetop to treetop, and long-range spotting, in which embers travel miles ahead of the main fire front to ignite new fires. Nearby communities remained under threat.

Despite the tragedy, firefighting operations resumed. Deputy incident commander Tyler Hecht told reporters on Friday that crews had taken what he called a tactical pause to regroup after the crash, but would continue their assault on the fire. "It's not going to change how we operate," he said. "We're going to continue to fight fire and utilize aircraft to support our firefighters on the ground." The decision to keep aircraft in the fight underscored the scale of the emergency and the calculus that commanders face when lives are already at stake.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox acknowledged the danger inherent in the work. He called wildland firefighting "among the most dangerous jobs in the world" and asked residents to remember the crew in their prayers. On Saturday evening, the Utah Highway Patrol organized a procession to escort the remains of what officials called the fallen heroes.

The crash also prompted the National Interagency Fire Center to issue evacuations for residents in the surrounding area and impose road closures. The landscape around Richfield—steep, forested, and now burning—had already proven treacherous enough to delay rescue efforts by more than a day. The same terrain that made the fire so difficult to suppress had made reaching the downed aircraft nearly impossible until conditions allowed teams to move in.