07/02/2026
I wanted to honor these women!
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Emily Barker fought wildfires because she loved it -- loved the work, the crew, the mountains, the sense of running toward the thing everyone else was running from. Sydney Watson had wanted to do this since she was a girl, and had already begun clearing a path for other women to follow her onto the fire line. On Saturday, the two of them were killed together on a Colorado mountainside, along with a third firefighter, Nick Hutcherson, 27, of Glendale, Arizona, when a wildfire blew up in high winds and gave them nowhere left to go.
They were among the first to reach the Knowles Fire, part of an elite crew that flies into remote country by helicopter to stop new fires before they grow. When 60-mile-per-hour winds drove the flames over them and cut off every escape route, the crew deployed their emergency fire shelters -- foil-lined tents that are the last resort when there is nowhere left to run. Two crewmates survived with burns. Emily, Sydney, and Nick did not.
Two of the three killed were women -- a striking fact in a field where women make up only about one in ten wildland firefighters. When the news first broke, many online tributes mistakenly mourned three "fallen brothers," and some posted AI-generated images of three men in fire gear. "There's an assumption that it's only male," said Riva Duncan, a retired wildland firefighter and president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters. "There's still some people who don't think we belong."
Emily Barker, 38, was, her family said, "as fun-loving and reliable as she was brave." To her father she was his "fire and ice child" -- she fought wildfires in the summer and groomed snow at ski resorts in the winter, and she loved both. She grew up outside Detroit, graduated summa cm laude from Northern Michigan University with a degree in ski area management, and made her way to Colorado, where she wintered in Vail and spent her summers on the fire line and running prescribed burns. She rose to engine captain with the Bureau of Land Management in Idaho before joining the Rifle Helitack crew.
Those who knew her describe a natural leader and mentor with a gift for calm in chaos. "She handled complex and chaotic fires with calmness and levelheadedness every single time," said one firefighter who worked with her. Her roommate of ten years, Sarah Brubeck, called her "the toughest, strongest girl I knew," and said she was "selfless, always looking out for someone else before her. I know that she was doing that up until the last moment on that mountain." Her mother, Rosemary, put it simply: "She died doing something she loves."
Sydney Watson was 27, from Warrior, Alabama, and had wanted to be a firefighter for as long as anyone could remember. She pitched for the University of Tennessee Southern softball team, where coaches remember "a quiet, composed leader" who left "a meaningful mark," and she had once planned to become a physical therapist -- but the pull of the fire line won out. She served with the U.S. Wildland Fire Service on the Rifle Helitack crew, and she had already begun leaving her own mark on the field: in 2023 she took part in the Women in Firefighting Exchange, a national program built to bring more women into wildland fire, and she led burn crews with North Carolina State Parks.
"Sydney immersed herself in everything she touched and was an amazing firefighter," her exchange colleagues wrote. "She was a natural leader. It's hard for people outside of the firefighting world to understand why we do what we do. We do it because we love it. Sydney loved it." Her hometown mayor said it was an honor for Warrior to claim her: "We will remember Sydney with gratitude, honor her sacrifice, and never forget the example of courage she leaves behind."
Women have fought wildfires in this country for more than eighty years, since the first all-woman forest crew was assembled in California in 1942, and they have had to fight for the right to do it: as recently as 1971, a young woman was dismissed from a fire crew after four hours because, the agency said, it could not provide separate toilets and sleeping quarters for a woman. They won those fights, and they have carried the same loads, passed the same brutal fitness tests, and taken the same risks ever since. Women have made that sacrifice too: from 1990 to 2024, 104 women died fighting fires in the United States, alongside thousands of men.
The women who wear the yellow shirt today still do so as trailblazers, and both Emily and Sydney were exactly that -- Emily rising through the ranks to engine captain, Sydney giving her time to a program designed so that more women could follow her onto the line. They did not set out to be symbols. They set out to do a hard, dangerous job because they loved it, and in doing so they widened the path for everyone behind them.
"While the wild animals and everything are running out of the woods, our wildland guys are running in," said Burk Minor of the Wildland Firefighter Foundation. Emily Barker, Sydney Watson, and Nick Hutcherson answered that call and made the ultimate sacrifice in service to strangers they would never meet, on land they had sworn to protect.
"These firefighters embodied the courage, professionalism, and selflessness that define the wildland fire service," said U.S. Wildland Fire Service Chief Brian Fennessy. But the truest tribute to Emily and Sydney may have come long before this weekend, from Emily's sister, a teacher, who used to tell her students about Emily: "Look at her, she's a female wildland fighter. You can do anything."
May their names be remembered, and may the path they helped clear stay open for all who come after them.
--> To honor Emily, Sydney, and Nick and to support the families of wildland firefighters killed or injured in the line of duty, we encourage you to give to the Wildland Firefighter Foundation, which provides immediate financial assistance to the families of the fallen, helps injured firefighters and their loved ones, and works to honor the legacy of those lost at https://wffoundation.org/
For a vivid memoir of one woman's seasons as the only member of an elite hotshot crew -- the closest a reader can come to the world Emily and Sydney lived in -- we highly recommend "Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West" at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9781668031476 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/4wmqbUc (Amazon)
For a searing memoir of seven years spent fighting wildfire across the West -- one that weaves the author's own story together with the history of fire suppression and the toll the work takes -- we recommend "Hotshot: A Life on Fire" at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9780802149503 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/4vd2JrA (Amazon)
For an inspiring picture book about the first woman to join the U.S. Forest Service as a fire spotter, we highly recommend “Headstrong Hallie” for ages 5 to 9 at https://www.amightygirl.com/headstrong-hallie
The little known story of America's first female firefighter -- a Black woman in New York City - is told in the picture book “Molly, by Golly!: The Legend of Molly Williams” for ages 5 to 8 at https://www.amightygirl.com/molly-by-golly
For two picture books about female firefighters saving the day, we recommend "Firefighter Flo!" (https://www.amightygirl.com/firefighter-flo) and "Fire Chief Fran" (https://www.amightygirl.com/fire-chief-fran), both for ages 4 and up
For young children, there is also a Julia Magnetic Dress Up Career Doll for ages 3 to 6 which includes firefighter and police officer in its career options at https://www.amightygirl.com/julia-dress-up-doll
To read more about Emily Barker and Sydney Watson's deaths, visit https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/us/women-forest-firefighter-deaths-emily-barker.html
