This truly was an example of people with years of experience (The CalFire crew Captain and the helicopter pilot) making a series of critical decisions at the right time that all added up to the survival of this Fire Crew in a situation that should have been unsurvivable. When the words, "Shelters deployed" go over the Command channel, all things stop and focus on that incident within an incident. At any point in this scenario, things could have gone really bad in an instant. The pilot, assessed the situation and knew he was going to be the only hope for these guys to make it out and followed through with a plan he formulated on the fly. The Captain, had just put new batteries in his radio and heard the pilot calling on Air to Ground channel. The rest is history.
The crews had to hike almost 4 1/2 miles to get to an appropriate landing zone. The "yellow helicopter" pilot followed them the entire way and coordinated another helicopter with a sling load of water for the crew which was starting to get muscle cramps as they had ditched their packs and tools when they initially went into their shelters (standard procedure as the packs can make the shelters less effective because of their bulk). When the pilot and Captain met back in base camp.....there was a pretty long, a unabashed hug. Pretty sure that they will be friends for life.
