After CBS‘ Fire Country served up its intense, two-hour Season 3 finale, many of our readers were left fretting over the fates of Vince (played by Billy Burke), Sharon (Diane Farr) and Walter (Jeff Fahey), who were last seen pinned inside the memory care facility just as its roof collapsed due to raging flames.
A few readers, though, were a bit preoccupied by the fact that Vince and Sharon, like son Bode before them, had darted into that building without their firefighters’ SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus).
“Since when do firefighters enter burning buildings without breathing apparatus and masks?” asked one commenter. Echoed another, “Where are all the breathing apparatuses and oxygen tanks?”
A third reader shrugged, “I guess smoke inhalation and standard oxygen tanks for firemen are not a thing for Fire Country!”
As TVLine does, we hand-delivered your query to series co-creator and star Max Thieriot, during a red carpet interview at Wednesday evening’s CBS Fest ’25 event.
Regarding Bode and Walter, who were first in when the priority was simply evacuating the latter’s memory care facility with the fast-moving Zabel Ridge blaze closing in, “They weren’t anticipating the fire being on the building yet,” Thieriot reminds in the video above.
Once Bode lugs Walter’s friend out, and the building now afire, he ostensibly could/would have grabbed proper gear, “but doesn’t make it back inside” before the roof collapses, Thieriot says.Now, while Bode and Walter were inside, Sharon and Vince rolled up, along with Jake and a 42 truck. Bode’s parents threw on their coats and helmets — but no SCBA — and made a beeline into the building, much to Jake’s frustration.
That, Thieriot allows, “was a creative choice, to see the characters’ faces” as they tried to find Walter and make it back outside. (He also notes that those masks are “difficult to wear” while also performing a scene.)
What’s more, “in the chaos of the moment, knowing that [Walter and Bode] were inside, it was like, ‘Grab them now and get them out!’” Thieriot says.
“But,” he makes clear, even as an EP on the series, “I wasn’t a part of the conversation about that specific choice in that moment.”
