Michael Carlson, a nearly 30-year veteran firefighter, started April 1 as Baker City Fire chief. (Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald)

Baker City Fire Chief Michael Carlson said a Sunday incident near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in which a man apparently set a fire to lure firefighters and then shot and killed two of them and critically wounded a third, is so unusual that he never considers such a situation when he responds to a fire.

“This is a rarity, but also a tragedy,” said Carlson, who started as Baker City fire chief on April 1 but has been a firefighter for nearly three decades.

Carlson said he has heard about similar incidents in which someone started a fire and then ambushed the firefighters who arrived.

But such cases are so unusual, he said, that he “usually doesn’t even think about it” while driving to a fire.

“I think about the job at hand,” Carlson said on Monday morning, June 30.

Carlson said the incidents he recalls hearing about involved fires started in homes or other structures.

The Idaho case was the first he is aware of when the blaze started in a recreation area.

Carlson said he doubts the shooting will prompt widespread changes in how fire agencies respond to blazes, unless there is a similar incident relatively soon.

Although Carlson has never been the target of an ambush, he said someone fired either a small-caliber firearm or pellet or BB gun at a fire truck he was driving to a blaze in Texas many years ago.

The shot left a small hole in the truck, he said.

The shooter was never identified, Carlson said.

He said that incident almost certainly was a spontaneous shooting rather than a premeditated attack as happened in Idaho.

After 22 years as a firefighter with the U.S. Army, Carlson worked for about 10 years as a firefighter in La Marque, Texas, a city about midway between Houston and Galveston, where he was promoted to interim chief.

Carlson worked as fire chief in Mosier, near The Dalles, for about a year before taking the Baker City job.