In general they try to get a line around the fire by creating breaks with dozers and often by hand, the setting backfires to burn it out of fuel. All the while they are dumping slurry from planes and helicopters. I have two inlaws who are on tribal hotshot crews. Those crews are the best of the best and their jobs are the riskiest. They often have to hike miles in to their positions carrying 60 pounds of gear, chainsaws, pulaskis, etc. They are unprotected and unsupported and have to always be eyeing an escape route and a plan B and plan C. They usually employ one or two spotters who stay on high ground and report wind and fire direction changes. The sole survivor in this incident was the spotter. I can only imagine how that guy must feel.
In the late afternoon there was localized monsoonal wind activity. Early reports are that the wind did a 180 on them in seconds, driving the fire right back and over them. Most of them had time to deploy their fire shelters but those things are only good to about 5-600 degrees before they begin to delaminate, plus they can't withstand direct flame. More suited to canopy fires in tall timber where the fire is racing overhead than the kind of low level brushy wildfire in this case.
I had to go to Prescott today, we saw the motorcade carrying the bodies down to the medical examiner's office in Phoenix. July 4 is Prescott's biggest week, the whole town was subdued and pretty quiet.

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