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The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center (LLC) has released its Annual Incident Review Summary and Year End Infographic for 2023. The Annual Incident Review Summary is based on more than 140 wildland fire incident reports and lessons shared with the LLC in 2023. The report condenses information from these reports into 10 pages, highlighting lessons for safer wildland firefighting operations. The Year End Infographic is a 2-page snapshot of the 2023 fire year. It highlights selected lessons learned and provides summary statistics on reported fatalities, near miss incidents, and injuries in 2023. The purpose of these two documents is to promote learning in the wildland fire service, with the recognition that risk cannot always be eliminated, and learning is vital to thriving in high-risk environments. This information may be used to guide annual refreshers and prepare for the 2024 fire year.

The following are some notable findings from 2023:

• Fatalities. There were 13 wildland firefighter fatalities in 2023.
• Significant increase in UTV-involved incidents. Between 2009 and 2022, only about two incidents involving Utility Terrain Vehicles (UTVs) were reported each year on average. In 2023, there were 13 UTV-involved incidents. In 12 of these incidents, a UTV either rolled over or caught fire.
• Burn injuries. There were 16 separate burn injury incidents reported. The most common scenarios resulting in burn injures continue to be drip torch use and falling into hot ash or active flame exposure.

• Hit by tree. 12 tree strikes occurred under a variety of conditions in seven different states. Two UTVs were struck by trees. In multiple instances, trees fell toward hand crews and engine crews.

• Entrapment. There were 12 separate entrapment events. Over 90% of the reported entrapments occurred during initial attack. Seven of those entrapments involved equipment becoming disabled and impacted by fire.

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