A new documentary from YouTube channel The Healthy Gamer provides a first-person view of what it’s like to be a member of a Hotshot crew. The filmmaker spent last season documenting the work of the Sawtooth Hotshots as they traveled the country fighting some of the season’s worst fires.
He mentions that he was inspired to make the film after a US Congressman from California said that firefighting hotshot crews were “unskilled labor”, what a joke. This film shows how physically demanding the job is, and how skillful these firefighters have to be in literal life or death scenarios.
I was enthralled from the beginning to the end of this film. I have never seen so much raw footage of wildfire fighting from an on-the-ground perspective. His narration of the events unfolding in the footage really puts the importance and difficulty of their work into perspective.
Hotshots have one of the most important jobs in the country for us folks that enjoy the great outdoors. We owe them a massive debt.
