It could have possibly prevented the disaster or helped get aid more quickly to the two burned men who died later.
Communication – The crew's single radio broke because its parachute failed to open. Furthermore, Dodge left his crew for several minutes, during which the second-in-command let them spread out instead of staying together. This may have contributed to the crew not trusting the "escape fire" that he set. Wagner "Wag" Dodge did not know most of the crew, as he had been doing base maintenance work during the normal training and "get acquainted" time of the season. All of these factors would have contributed to the volatility of the fire, as they would have decreased fuel moisture Additionally, the burn-over incident occurred on a hot day, on a south-facing slope, in the early afternoon. The south facing slope of Mann Gulch was mostly knee high cheatgrass, an especially volatile fuel. Fuel – Fire spreads fast in dry grass. 
Slope also makes it very difficult to run.
Slope – Fire spreads faster up a slope, and the south facing slope north of Mann Gulch was about a 75% incline in places. Several factors that combined to create the disaster are described in Norman Maclean's book Young Men and Fire. On this day, he fought the fire on his own for four hours before he met the crew of smokejumpers who had been dispatched from Hale Field, Missoula, Montana, in a Douglas DC-3. As a ranger, he still had a responsibility to watch for and help fight fires, but it was not his primary role. He had been a smokejumper the previous year but had given it up because of the danger. Harrison, a college student at Montana State University, was working the summer as recreation and fire prevention guard for the Meriwether Canyon Campground. The fire was spotted by forest ranger James O. The fire started when lightning struck south of Mann Gulch, a tributary of the Missouri River that cuts through steep terrain for approximately five miles ( 8 km ) in the Gates of the Mountains, The place was noted and named by Lewis and Clark on their journey west in 1805. A sign is placed near Mann Gulch to memorialize the tragedy, and can be seen from the waters of the nearby Missouri River. The location of the Mann Gulch fire was added as a historical district to the United States National Register of Historic Places on May 19, 1999. Newman, was loosely based on the events of the Mann Gulch fire. The 1952 film Red Skies of Montana, starring actor Richard Widmark and directed by Joseph M. Young Men and Fire won the National Book Critics Circle Award for non-fiction in 1992. Maclean, who worked northwestern Montana in logging camps and for the Forest Service in his youth, recounted the events of the fire and ensuing tragedy and undertook a detailed investigation of the fire's causes. University of Chicago English professor and author Norman Maclean (1902–1990) researched the fire and its behavior for his book, Young Men and Fire (1992) which was published after his death. The agency also increased emphasis on fire research and the science of fire behavior. The United States Forest Service drew lessons from the tragedy of the Mann Gulch fire by designing new training techniques and safety measures that developed how the agency approached wildfire suppression. 
The fire would continue for five more days before being controlled.
During the next few minutes, a "blow-up" of the fire covered 3,000 acres (1,200 ha) in ten minutes, claiming the lives of 13 firefighters, including 12 of the smokejumpers.
As the team approached the fire to begin fighting it, unexpected high winds caused the fire to suddenly expand, cutting off the men's route and forcing them to flee uphill. A team of 15 smokejumpers parachuted into the area on the afternoon of August 5, 1949, to fight the fire, rendezvousing with a former smokejumper who was employed as a fire guard at the nearby campground. The Mann Gulch fire was a wildfire reported on August 5, 1949, in a gulch located along the upper Missouri River in the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness (then known as the Gates of the Mountains Wild Area), Helena National Forest, in the U.S.
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