Smokejumper
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A smokejumper is a wildland firefighter that parachutes into a remote area to combat wildfires.
Smokejumpers are most often deployed to fires that are extremely remote. The extra risk and trouble associated with this method is justified by reaching a wildfire shortly after ignition when it is still relatively small. Another argument for delivering wildland firefighters by parachute is the fact that the fixed-wing aircraft that carry smokejumpers are cheaper to operate over long distances, carry more personnel and equipment and have higher top speeds than the helicopters often used for other fire deployments. While remoteness is one reason parachute deployment is used, it adds to the risk inherent in smokejumping as crews are often hours away from help if the wind shifts or someone gets injured. The ordinary risk of a parachute jump, the adverse conditions for the jump, and the lack of resources for firefighting and rescue once on the ground in a remote area gives smokejumping a reputation as exceedingly dangerous work.
Smokejumpers use two types of parachutes: round parachutes (used by the Forest Service), and ram-air type sport parachutes, employed by the Bureau of Land Management. Since they are jumping into remote and often forested locations, they jump wearing heavily padded clothing in order to be prepared for the possibility of landing in a tree.
Typical smokejumper fires are small (under several acres), isolated, and in mountainous or very remote terrain. Once on the ground, smokejumpers normally use hand tools such as pulaskis (a combination ax and mattock), shovels, chainsaws and portable pumps to attack the fire. Often their first attempt to cut a firebreak fails to contain the spread of a wildfire, and ground forces (engine crews, hotshots, and local handcrews) may be called in to contain the fire. In practice, smokejumpers usually catch in excess of 90% of the fires they respond to, although publice exposure of the lost fires is understandably much greater. Explosives are sometimes used in this role, having been first used on a fire by jumpers in 1974 as a fireline technique. However, fireline explosives have proven to be expensive, time consuming, and ineffective due to the rapidly changing dynamics in the fire environment.
Prior to the full establishment of smokejumping, experiments with parachute insertion of firefighters were conducted in 1934 in Utah and in the Soviet Union. Earlier aviation firefighting experiments had been conducted with air delivery of equipment and "water bombs." Although this first experiment was not pursued, another was begun in 1939 in the Methow Valley, Washington State, where professional parachutists jumped into a variety of timber and mountainous terrain, proving the feasability of the idea. This also saw the first Forest Service employee jumper, Francis Lufkin, who was originally hired as a climber to extract the professional parachutists from the trees. It is believed that he made this first jump on a dare from the parachutists.
The following year, in 1940, permanent jump operations were established at Winthrop, Washington and Ninemile Camp, Montana. The first actual fire jumps in the history of smokejumping were made by Rufus Robinson and Earl Cooley at Marten Creek in the Nez Perce National Forest on July 12, 1940 out of Ninemile, followed shortly by a two-man fire jump out of Winthrop. In subsequent years, the Ninemile Camp operation moved to Missoula, where it became the Missoula Smokejumper Base. The Winthrop operation remained at its original location, as North Cascades Smokejumper Base. The "birthplace" of smokejumping continues to be debated between these two bases, the argument having persisted at this time for approximately 67 years. After observing smokejumper training methods at Ninemile Camp, Major William H. Lee, U.S. Army, went on to establish the U.S. army airborne.
Despite the seemingly dangerous nature of the job, fatalities are rare. The largest disaster involving smokejumper deaths on the job was the Mann Gulch fire blowup of 1949. Thirteen firefighters died during the blowup, twelve of them jumpers. This disaster directly led to the establishment of modern safety standards used by all wildland firefighters. Statisticaly, smokejumping remains safer than ground-based firefighting as a whole, perhaps due to many unreported injuries from ground collisions and trees.
In the United States, smokejumper bases currently operate in Missoula, Montana, Fairbanks, Alaska, Boise, Idaho, McCall, Idaho, Winthrop, Washington, Redding, California, West Yellowstone, Montana, and Redmond, Oregon. The largest of these bases is in Missoula. Formerly, smokejumper bases have also been located in Cave Junction, Oregon, Idaho City, Idaho, Bristol, Virginia, and a few other locations. Russia, Canada [1], and Mongolia also have smokejumper programs.
[edit] References
- Cohen, Stan. A Pictorial History of Smokejumping. Pictorial Histories Publishing, 1983. ISBN 0-933126-40-9
- Pyne, Stephen J. Fire In America. University of Washington Press, 1982. ISBN 0-295-97592-X
