The crew is positioned in the path of the fire. Soon the fire will creep over the mtn. The crew is digging a fireline and
back burning. The goal is to reduce the amt of fuel (brush) in the path of the fire so the fire has no fuel to continue to burn.
You all may already know this but those of you (like myself) that dont - I am trying to explain in layman terms. A back burn is when you use fire to combat fire. The crew used drip torches (exactly what it means - fire drips from a gasoline container) to set little ground fires to burn in the direction of the oncoming fire. Meanwhile they will usually use tractors and such to dig a fireline. A fireline is a path dug by hand with shovels (4 feet wide) or tractor (roads width). It exposes dirt and rids the area of fuel (brush, weeds, trees- anything that'll burn). Cool huh? took me two yrs to finally understand all this info.
