BOISE — Gov. Brad Little proclaimed July 2 as Wildland Firefighter Day in Idaho, aligning with the nation’s observance of the day and recognizing the service and sacrifice of wildland firefighters and their support personnel.

“Wildland firefighters answer the call under some of the most challenging conditions imaginable,” Dustin Miller, director of the Idaho Department of Lands, said in a press statement. “They spend long days and nights away from their families, often in difficult terrain and hazardous conditions, protecting Idaho’s citizens, landscapes, and communities.

“Wildland Firefighter Day is an opportunity to recognize their commitment, professionalism and sacrifice.”

The national day of observance was established in 2022 to recognize the contributions of wildland firefighters and fire support personnel who have a key role in protecting natural resources in ways that often go unseen by the wider public.

Part of the effort to recognize these unsung individuals is undertaken throughout the year by the Boise-based Wildland Firefighter Foundation that works to provide resources for families of firefighters killed in the line of duty and assist firefighters and their families when recovering from injury.

Burk Minor, executive director of the foundation, noted this year’s day of remembrance arrives at a difficult moment for the community.

On Saturday, three wildland firefighters were killed and two were injured while fighting the Knowles Fire in western Colorado. In response to this loss, Minor said the foundation was coordinating travel arrangements for the impacted families and working with the U.S. Forest Service’s Honor Guard to establish memorials.

Minor said the three firefighters who died in the fire — Emily Barker, 38; Nick Hutcherson, 27; and Sydney Watson, 27 — will soon have a place on the Boise headquarters’ walls of honor, which presently memorializes over 400 fallen firefighters.

In addition to immediate assistance, Minor said the organization also provides behavioral health and peer support services along with continued outreach to impacted families — on Tuesday the foundation supported the remembrance of 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots who lost their lives in Arizona’s Yarnell Hill Fire in 2013, Minor said.

“It’s not just these five individuals, the three fatalities and two survivors,” Minor said. “The whole wildland community knows these people. They’ve all worked together, they’ve went to school together, they’ve trained together — the whole community is mourning. So, the impact of mental health spreads a long ways in a situation like this.”

FIRE OUTLOOK

Wednesday’s proclamation arrives as the U.S. Drought Monitor shows drought conditions persisting across 97% of the state and wildland fires are trending well above average at the national level.

Year-to-date, the U.S. has seen 3.1 million acres burned across 36,262 fires nationwide. Compared to the last 10 years, the acreage burned to this point is the second highest, while individual fires are the highest. The last year with more acreage burned to this point was 2022 with 4.1 million acres burned to this point in the year, according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center.

On Monday, NIFC upgraded the the nation’s wildland fire preparedness level, which provides an indication of the strain on national wildland firefighting resources on a 1 to 5 scale. The nation is currently at level 4, the second-highest rating. NIFC resources state this is indicative of national firefighting resources being “heavily committed” and regularly mobilized across larger distances.

{p class=”p2”}According to a July 1 report from NIFC, 257 new fires were reported nationwide on Tuesday and 51 large fires remain unconfined. All active fires have exceeded 550,000 acres burned, with the largest of these fires being the Cottonwood Fire near Beaver, Utah, which has burned over 90,000 acres at the time of writing.

As of Wednesday, the Shingle Creek Fire is Idaho’s only large active wildfire, defined by NIFC as either a timber-fuel fire exceeding 100 acres or a grass-fuel fire exceeding 300 acres. Located six miles southwest of Riggins, the fire is 635 acres in size and at 77% containment.