Wildfire: Feel the Heat 1999

Overview

There are over 20,000 wildfires in a typical year; we follow crews to a few of them. First, we see the preseason physical training and a prescribed burn, which burns the flammable underbrush before the trees themselves are flammable. But since these burns can't do the whole job, we see how firespotters pinpoint lighting-caused fires that smokejumpers then have to parachute into. In the open wilderness of Idaho, the job is relatively simple. In California, where forests are closer to civilization