The Forest is being obscured by the trees.....it is not about rotor blades and a longline....it is about a near mid-air collision and a pair of Pilots who came that close and did not see each other and AFTER cutting the line with the attached bucket....the one aircraft continued flying without the pilot realizing what had happened.
I have been on Fires where there were lots of helicopters and airplanes fighting the fire....from Chinooks and Skycranes right down to Bell JetRangers.....and maintaining flight separation was accomplished without any real difficultly due to the procedures being used....and pilots keeping their situational awareness up in high gear.
My interest is less in the differences in lines and such and much more wondering how the near mid-air came to happen.