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As seasonal wildfires rage in Oregon, Idaho, Utah and Southern California, firefighters in those states have already mobilized. But not all fires can be reached by road. Some require a little more finesse. That's where smokejumpers come in.
Smokejumpers spend their careers going to the wrong place at the wrong time. They parachute to the edge of wildfires deep in roadless wilderness, then fight the massive blazes with little more than hand tools.
The job can be just as dangerous as it sounds and no one knows that better than Frankie Romero, who leads the training of rookie jumpers at the McCall Smokejumper Base in central Idaho.
While fighting a fire once, the upbeat and non-swearing base manager was struck by a falling snag, smokejumper parlance for the burning limb of a dried-out tree. It missed his jugular by a few inches, but left a gash that required quick medical attention.
That wasn’t an option until the surrounding fire died down enough for rescuers to get to him. The badly wounded Romero had to spend a night under the care of fellow firefighters with only a first aid kit and a few T-shirts for a pillow.
Incidents like this are what constitute a rough day at work for smokejumpers. And a normal day at the office is hardly mellow. When deployed to a fireline, a smokejumper’s e-calendar might look something like this: Jump out of a plane flying at 15,000 feet, land a parachute near a hundred-acre forest fire, fell a few trees with a chainsaw and hack hundreds of feet of trench using hand tools.
Rookie smokejumpers must learn how to clench a double helix of adrenaline and toil without losing their grip on a dozen life-and-death decisions. They must also master the art of sewing –- smokejumpers tailor their own outerwear.
Their training is designed to minimize the risks inherent in the job, but of course, all the training in the world can’t erase the risks of dropping out of airplanes and landing next to wildfires.
“It’s really easy for folks to say ‘Look if you just follow these rules you won’t ever get hurt,’” says Romero. “That’s how media and non-firefighters view them.”
Read on as new recruits test their mettle at McCall and learn the skills required to sky-dive into an active fire.
Top photo: The not-fun part of practicing a parachute landing: getting dropped from “The Mutilator.”
Second photo: Lane Lamoreaux, 27, of Flagstaff, Arizona, is a second-year smokejumper at the McCall base and a former United States Marine.
Photos: Matt Mills McKnight/Wired.com
The Mutilator
Unlike recreational skydivers, smokejumpers don’t always have the option of coasting to a soft landing in open country. Before they leap into free fall, jumpers toss down crepe-paper streamers that act as airborne windsocks, showing the strength and direction of the wind at different altitudes. Even so, a powerful wind shear can occur in the final moments of the descent, propelling the chute to 20 miles an hour or more, making it impossible to control. To prepare for these harsh impacts, rookies spend a lot of time practicing the surprisingly complex art of slamming into the earth. Their landing simulator, affectionately nicknamed “The Mutilator” (top photo), lifts them up and drops them at one of three different speeds, with a maximum of 10 mph. “Jumpers should hit the ground with both feet together,” says McCall base manager Frankie Romero, “and roll down one side of their body with knees bent and a pivot at the hip as they roll to the opposite shoulder.”
Incidents like this are what constitute a rough day at work for smokejumpers. And a normal day at the office is hardly mellow. When deployed to a fireline, a smokejumper’s e-calendar might look something like this: Jump out of a plane flying at 15,000 feet, land a parachute near a hundred-acre forest fire, fell a few trees with a chainsaw and hack hundreds of feet of trench using hand tools.
Rookie smokejumpers must learn how to clench a double helix of adrenaline and toil without losing their grip on a dozen life-and-death decisions. They must also master the art of sewing –- smokejumpers tailor their own outerwear.
Their training is designed to minimize the risks inherent in the job, but of course, all the training in the world can’t erase the risks of dropping out of airplanes and landing next to wildfires.
“It’s really easy for folks to say ‘Look if you just follow these rules you won’t ever get hurt,’” says Romero. “That’s how media and non-firefighters view them.”
Read on as new recruits test their mettle at McCall and learn the skills required to sky-dive into an active fire.
Top photo: The not-fun part of practicing a parachute landing: getting dropped from “The Mutilator.”
Second photo: Lane Lamoreaux, 27, of Flagstaff, Arizona, is a second-year smokejumper at the McCall base and a former United States Marine.
Photos: Matt Mills McKnight/Wired.com
