Into the Firestorm - Going South
The second episode of the "Into the Firestorm" series was on Tuesday night and I was able to watch it. This episode continued to feature the Redmond Smoke Jumpers and Prineville Hotshots. It also featured two other crews, the Mill Creek Hotshots and a helitack crew out of southern California. Apparently, the Mill Creek Hotshots have disbanded since the filming of this series. I'll have to watch the video to catch which helitack crew was featured and then I'll post an update.
I liked this episode a little better than the first. It had some pretty interesting fire behavior shots from a fire in California. This intense fire behavior was out of the ordinary because it was at night, when fires usually calm down a bit.
There was good footage of retardant drops by air tankers and bucket drops by helicopters.
One point that I found pretty accurate was the portrayal of problems that can arise on wildland fires. The smoke jumpers' equipment got hung up in the trees, so they had to do a little tree climbing before they could really fight much fire. The Prineville Hotshots humped a bunch of hose, pumps, and nozzles into a fire only to discover that helicopter bucket drops had all but put the fire out. They were left with the boring stuff - mop-up.
My rating on this episode: 4 out of 5.
