USER SCENARIO
On June 28, 2025, hikers report smoke near Baron Peak in the Sawtooth range northeast of Boise, Idaho. It's a popular backcountry area so the Forest Service decides to call out several hand crews including Thorn Creek Hotshots.
On the way to the scene, Thorn Creek's supervisor, Katherine "Kap" Lundgren gets a briefing from the overhead team. Thorn Creek's orders are to build a fire line to link up with a crew of Smokejumpers along a ridge southeast of the fire to contain the blaze.
Once Thorn Creek gets to the Staging area, Kap checks the crew to see their status. Not surprisingly, everyone is green except for Grubber who's biometric sensors judge him to be in condition yellow. She pulls him aside to have a word with him and he assures Kap that although he had a late night out with some friends, he’ll “green-up” in no time.
When everyone’s ready, she tells her lieutenant, Torch to double time it up to their assigned area. She is already worried about running out of time but they’ll be able to cover the six miles in about an hour—twice as fast as they used to do it before they got the Firewalker suits.
Torch arrives at their assigned area first and starts plotting out the route of the fire line.
Martinez, the Operations Section Chief had laid out a rough route but Torch walks the line and uses the app on his smartphone to set more specific waypoints that Grubber, who mans the chainsaw, can follow. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew arrives and Kap orders Scout to take a position on a nearby peak with a better view of the fire.
On the way up, Scout deploys his "ninja stars" which are biodegradable sensors that form a mesh network and will send a signal when they reach a set temperature.
When Scout arrives at the top, he checks the status of the sensor array and the position of the crew's drone, then takes a minute to check in with his fiancee, Jody.
She’s worried about him but appreciates the call. He cuts it short when Kap tries to raise him on the radio.
It turns out Kap has a funny feeling about this fire and wants to see a video feed from the UAV. Scout makes the request and passes the controls of the drone over to Kap.
Kap notices a cliff band that could send the fire right their way if the wind changes. She asks Scout to enter a "sixth sense" ticket into the predictive fire model.
With the fire line almost complete, Kap decides she wants to strengthen their position. She runs a burn-out simulation and simultaneously gets approval form Martinez for the operation. She radios Torch and goes over the plan with him.
As Torch conducts the burn-out, Scout notices the smoke from the main fire change color. That usually means something is up.
Sure enough, a moment later, he gets a yellow alert warning about a wind shift in the valley. He radios Kap to make sure she saw the alert.
Kap did see the alert and she decides the pull up the fire predictor map to see how much time they have. She moves the slider on the bar and sees that the fire is moving fast. They have fifteen minutes before condition red.
Kap radios the crew and tells them it’s time to head back to the staging area. Torch hits the trail with the balance of the crew while Kap waits for Scout.
Just as Scout comes into view, she feels a haptic buzzing in her gloves. She checks her smartphone and yells to Scout to pick it up. The fire has moved fast and they are in condition red. They double-time it down the trail and quickly catch up to the rest of the crew.
Within an hour, they’re back at the staging area. During the after-action report, Martinez tells them that from the UAV footage, it looks like their line held and he compliments them on their hard work. They’ll go back in to finish containing the fire tomorrow and Sentinel will be there with them.
