As U.S. wildfire season shatters records, firefighter entrapments hit 20-year high

By Andrew Hay

Aug 13 (Reuters) - Federal data shows U.S. firefighters are being overtaken by wildfires at the highest rate in two decades, a grim milestone in a fire season that has already burned more land than any on record for this point in the year.

So far in 2026, the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center, a federal agency, has counted 12 entrapments — life-threatening situations in which fire behavior compromises the escape routes or safety zones of firefighting personnel. That already exceeds the full-year average of nine over the past 20 years and marks the highest year-to-date number since 2006. At least six firefighters have died and dozens more have been injured in such incidents.

A season unlike any other

The entrapment numbers track the scale of the fires themselves. The National Interagency Fire Center says 6.4 million acres (about 2.6 million hectares) have burned as of Aug. 12, the highest level on record for that date and roughly five times the area burned in Europe this year. Firefighters have responded to more than 46,500 wildfires, the most in over a decade.

Experts attribute much of that to climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels, which helped produce a historically low winter snowpack, record summer temperatures and decades of drought across the U.S. West. Those conditions mean crews are confronting drier, faster-moving fires for longer stretches of the year.

“Firefighters are exposed to danger for longer periods in more extreme conditions,” said Wesley Page, a U.S. Forest Service fire specialist who has studied entrapments.

Full suppression, more risk

Seven active and retired firefighters told Reuters they are also worried that crews are taking unusual risks because of an all-out approach to stopping fires mandated by the Trump administration. That approach, known as full suppression, calls for aggressive initial attacks on every blaze — a break from recent wildfire management strategy.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who oversees the Forest Service, said in an April letter to staff that her top priority was to “accelerate initial attack and use a full suppression strategy.” But Riva Duncan, president of the firefighter advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, said that strategy is not always appropriate given conditions on the ground are “insanely” volatile, with extreme dryness and strong winds.

“We can’t put people in front of some of these fires, we just can’t,” said Duncan, who worked as a fire duty officer in the U.S. Southwest this year.

U.S. Wildland Fire Service Director Brian Fennessy, whose agency was created to consolidate federal firefighting forces under the Interior Department, said he was puzzled by the 2025 policies encouraging more aggressive initial attack, the first response to a wildfire. “Aggressive does not mean taking extra or extraordinary risk of harming your people,” he told the Hotshot Wake Up podcast this month.

Agency response and staffing cuts

The U.S. Forest Service, part of the Department of Agriculture and historically the lead agency on wildland fire, said firefighter safety was its highest priority and that investigations are ongoing into the entrapments. The agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the impact of full suppression tactics or staffing cuts. The newly created U.S. Wildland Fire Service said it is reviewing the cases to improve firefighter safety.

Some former officials say staffing reductions have made things worse. Scott Fitzwilliams, former supervisor of Colorado’s White River National Forest, said full suppression marks a return to failed 20th-century policies that let forest fuel accumulate and now drive the country’s wildfire crisis. He said more than 6,000 Forest Service job cuts in 2025 as part of broader federal downsizing wiped out the support structure for the agency’s 11,300 firefighters and increased fatigue.

“The pressure to put out all fires when they are small puts firefighters at risk,” said Fitzwilliams, who retired last year and knew Emily Barker, one of the Rifle Helitack crew members killed in the Knowles Fire.

Deaths in Colorado

The deadliest entrapment this year occurred June 27 on Colorado’s Knowles Fire, where four helicopter-borne firefighters — known as a helitack crew — died and one was severely burned. It was the most deadly entrapment in 13 years. Around a quarter of 2026 entrapments have involved helitack crews, according to the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center, though the U.S. Wildland Fire Service said the numbers do not necessarily mean those operations have become more dangerous.

Other entrapments have involved Washington state crews who abandoned vehicles after they caught fire, and bulldozer drivers overrun by flames while scraping fire breaks in Washington and Oregon.

Nationally, entrapments historically account for about four of the average 17 wildland firefighter deaths each year. This year, six of the 13 people who have died fighting fires were trapped by flames, the data shows.

Back in Colorado, Page said the full-suppression emphasis may have made firefighters on the Knowles Fire act more aggressively than they otherwise would. Assigned to firefighting duties near the same area two days after the entrapment, he said a blaze like that one would likely have burned itself out once the wind dropped because of the rugged terrain and relatively sparse vegetation.

The combination of record heat, dried-out forests and an aggressive response doctrine is likely to keep pushing firefighters to the limits of safe operations. Fitzwilliams and others argue the only lasting solution is to restore support capacity and accept that some fires must be managed rather than fought head-on.

(Reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico; editing by Donna Bryson and Nia Williams)