CHELAN, Wash. — Firefighters often talk about wildfires as living things, each one different in its inherently dangerous behavior and fickle shifts of temper. They are so unpredictable that even a seemingly mundane part of the day — getting to the job — can turn deadly.

It did here on Wednesday, in the middle of one of the worst wildfire summers in the West on record, when three firefighters died after their vehicle crashed near a blaze here in north-central Washington State. The fire caught them.

“It hurts deep, but the job goes on,” Representative David Reichert, whose congressional district includes the area, said at a news conference here on Thursday, where fire officials pointed out that the situation could get worse still with a new round of wind and heat. “That’s what first responders do,” he added.

The dead men were identified Thursday by the Forest Service as Tom Zbyszewski, 20; Andrew Zajac, 26; and Richard Wheeler, 31. One of the injured, Daniel Lyon, 25, was being treated at Harborview Hospital in Seattle, the Forest Service said. Mr. Lyon lives in Puyallup, Wash., but no hometowns were immediately given for the fallen men.

The accident here in Washington, near the town of Twisp, was the worst loss of life in a wildfire in the state since 2001, when four people were killed by a fire, according to federal figures.