The Laguna Hot Shots and their Superintendent Jim Houston appear briefly in the video story above, which is Part 1 of an NBC News series about climate change. One of the main points in the first video is that soot from forest fires contributes to air pollution that settles on arctic ice, causing it to darken, absorb more solar heat, and melt more quickly.

In Part 2 below, Superintendent Houston talks briefly about the 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots that died last year, not long after the Laguna Hotshots worked with them on another fire.

I was a member of the Laguna Hotshots for two years, beginning the year it was created in 1974 at Mt. Laguna, California.