OK, I too am guilty of analyzing this one to death, only because it is my main phobia - power loss at night over a heavily developed area. I've seen three different versions of the tape, on one it sounds like "flare", another it sounds like "wires", so I dunno.
As far as the first part of the emergency goes, first, here's the helicopter they were flying:
Schweizer 333 (click here for technical info). No auto-relight (
AFAIK), so I suspect they were speaking of autorotation. The "beep-beep-beep" in the background sounds a lot like the low rotor-RPM horn on the 300CBi, but I've never been in a runnning 333 so I make no claims. But if they were on a steep climbout when the fire sputtered and died, it could take awhile to get airspeed and RPM back. Again, I wasn't there so am just speculating.
Bottom line for me is that if I am faced with a similar situation, I hope it comes out that well - anything better is gravy for certain.