Firestorm ’77: The True Story of the Honda Canyon Fire

A combination of hurricane-force winds and the snapping of an electrical pole starts the Honda Canyon Fire on Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, early in the morning of December 20, 1977. In the course of events, a conflict of cultures emerges, Military commanders, fearful of the Base’s cold war secrets being compromised, attempted to control the protocols and procedures of the civilian fire fighters called upon to battle the enormous blaze, offering up their own untrained personnel to fight a conflagration that, for all intents and purposes, should have never been fought and couldn’t be beaten.