Juan discusses the lack of left rudder input. That is in the context of whether there was an alternate means of picking the right wing up. Juan implies that had the rudder been applied, that might have worked.
I've been wondering the same thing. I'm puzzled by the significant amount of right rudder almost from the time of impact with the tree causing the aircraft to be in a skidding turn. However it's corrected about the time aircraft is in centre of the blue, and you can see the change in excessive yaw almost immediately. Would carrying through to a boot full of left rudder have helped in picking up the right wing? It's unfair to perhaps even ask the question. The startle effect was enormous by this time, they had but a very few seconds to analyse and react where we've had days. And most importantly, we don't know whether the aileron circuit was damaged or restricted by the departure of the float and other possible complications from the tree strike.
One other possible factor returns to haunt me. The wind is coming over the ridge they are turning to avoid. The right wing is possibly still down in 'dirty' and turbulent air, the left wing probably much less so. Indeed it may well be hit with the full force of the air mass as it comes over the top of the ridge. It's hard to comprehend these situations unless you've been down in amongst the rocks as can happen in adventurous ridge soaring. I've seen 15 knots vanish off the ASI in Blanik in a few seconds as we popped over a spur in the main ridge and encountered the resultant curl over. Happily we had around 60 knots at the start, but it's not a nice feeling when it hits you.
My final observation is that it's very hard to pick the variations in terrain from any reasonable altitude. The complexity of the terrain in this situation would not have been fully evident until they were committed to the drop, There may have been a prior pass to evaluate these factors - we just don't know. But it all demonstrates that safe aerial firefighting is a very demanding activity, and experience gained from a long history of low level flying in relatively benign operations ie AG work, is surely a prerequisite for getting down in amongst the smoke, heat and turbulence of direct fire attack, where target fixation cannot be allowed to take over from other complex considerations.