Back when I was still an active firefighter, I had one or two of those "whoa time to go" moments, and the gear gets REALLY light for a few moments.
I was sounding a floor in a fully involved house with my Halligan during a primary search - THUMP the floor - crawl a bit - THUMP! THUMP! Whoosh! the Halligan went right through the floor and fell out of my hand...time to follow the hose back out...quickly.

I watched/re-watched the video carefully, and I can't see how they would have done anything differently. The job is to get up close and personal with the fire -- for the bucket to be effective and in the right place the truck had to be that close. When the chemical fire started floating out of the building on top of firefighting wash, they still had the bucket in the air. It took all that time to bring the guys down, and then the truck was still on supports -- it looks like you could just jump in and drive away, but you can't move the truck until the supports are retracted. There just wasn't enough time.

Sometimes you lose equipment in the course of doing the job. Sometimes the equipment is more expensive, sometimes its cheaper. This one was a little more painful than most for the accountants. Glad everyone made it clear in time -- sacrificing guys to save equipment is pointless.