That is definitely the most unbelievable example of the advantage to using RAW that I have ever seen!
When I am shooting something very important, or if there is going to be some tricky lighting I switch to RAW + JPEG. For instance, the fireworks from this past 4th of July. The only disadvantage is the memory card space RAW eats up. I shot 139 photos of the fireworks & had to change an 8G card at just over a 100 photos on my Canon 50D.
They were all 5 sec exposures, if you want to see them:
John Nadrowski : photos : Fireworks July 5 2009 16th Street Park Bayonne NJ