Cottonwood Fire Burned Vehicles Incident 2025

On March 21 after morning briefing, crews engaged in suppression operations. A Type 2 Initial Attack Crew was tasked with patrolling and securing fire perimeter. The crew parked three of their pickup trucks in "good" black, with the closest patch of underburned cedars located 700-900 feet away. The crew spilt into squads and went to work for the day. They said it took them 15–20 minutes to hike into the closest areas of unburned and underburned cedars where they were performing mop up and indirect line construction. Around 1545, fire activity began to dramatically increase in one of the large unburned and underburned islands of red cedar near the crew’s parking area. The crew’s individual squads became concerned. Around 1600, as one of the squads got to the approximate location of the parking area, they were met by a large black column of smoke and high-intensity flames that were leaning over the parking area’s general vicinity. Moments later, the smoke lifted enough to see that the three parked trucks were fully involved by fire.