An aircraft involved in fighting the Gold Mountain fire in southwestern Colorado crashed into a reservoir in Gunnison County on Sunday evening, officials said.
The body of the pilot, believed to have been the only person on board, was recovered from the Silver Jack Reservoir later Sunday night by the Montrose County Sheriff’s Office dive team, the Gunnison County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
Sheriff’s officials said the body will be taken to the Gunnison County Coroner’s Office and that no further information will be released until the pilot’s next-of-kin have been notified.
The Gunnison Regional Communications Center received a call at 5:17 p.m. Sunday reporting an aircraft had gone down in the reservoir northeast of Ouray, sheriff’s officials said. The type of aircraft was not identified, but officials said they had confirmed it was involved in firefighting operations at the Gold Mountain fire.
The death of the firefighting pilot comes just over two weeks after three federal firefighters — Emily Barker, 38; Nick Hutcherson, 27; and Sydney Watson, 27 — were killed when they were overtaken by flames while battling the Snyder fire in western Colorado near the Utah border.
The Gold Mountain fire, one of several major wildfires burning across Colorado, has grown to 35,622 acres, or nearly 56 square miles, since igniting two miles north of Ouray on June 27. As of Sunday night, it was 13% contained.
More than 1,000 personnel were on scene to fight the wildfire as of Sunday, according to the Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team 3, which is leading the fire response.
On Saturday afternoon, fire managers announced they were beginning a “strategic firing operation” from Pinnacle Peak to Silver Jack Reservoir in an effort to create a containment line by burning fuel at a slow and controlled pace back toward the fire.
Silver Jack Reservoir, which is about 300 acres in size, is in the Uncompahgre National Forest and is less than 20 miles from both Ouray and Ridgway.
On Sunday, mandatory evacuations related to the Gold Mountain fire remained in place for residents of Ouray and Gunnison counties north of the fire on Sunday, according to the evacuation map.
The Ouray County evacuation zone was bordered to the west by County Road 8 and County Road 10, to the south by Baldy Peak, to the east by Green Mountain and the Cimarron Ridge and to the north by Tommy Creek and Deer Creek.
Evacuations were also in effect northeast of the Cimarron Ridge, along the border of Gunnison and Montrose counties, according to the map. That area is bordered to the north by Washboard Rock, to the east by Gunnison County Road 864A, to the south by Hampden Lake and to the west by Cimarron Ridge.