Forest Firefighters : They Jump at Chance to Work

For his summer vacation, schoolteacher Steve Bierman is doing things like jumping off a 100-foot tower while dangling from a cable.

Bierman, 25, is one of America’s 360 smoke jumpers, and when he’s not parachuting from airplanes into forest fires this summer, he will be practicing parachuting from airplanes into forest fires. That’s how he came to be sliding down from the tower while hanging onto a cable in a simulated parachute jump. He does his practicing here at one of the nation’s nine smoke jumper bases, the only one in California.

‘Something Worthwhile’

“We do this for the love of adventure, the camaraderie, for the fulfillment of doing something worthwhile,” Bierman said. “We certainly don’t do it for money. There’s no money in it. It’s long hours, hard work. But it produces more personal satisfaction than anything I have ever done.”

“People think we’re nuts parachuting out of airplanes into tree tops to fight raging forest fires, then hiking five to 10 miles out of rugged mountains and remote woods carrying at least 110 pounds of gear on our backs,” added David Noble, 37, one of Bierman’s colleagues and a 20-year veteran Forest Service smoke jumper.

Bierman and Noble are among 40 of the elite firefighters at the Redding base. There are three bases in Idaho, two in Montana, one each in Oregon, Washington, Alaska and California. Smoke jumpers are all stationed in Western states with inaccessible mountain timberland.

Of the smoke jumpers based at the big 40-acre U.S. Forest Service-California Department of Forestry Fire Center on the outskirts of Redding, eight are permanent, year-round Forest Service employees. The other 32, like Bierman, are smoke jumpers during the summer fire season and work at other jobs the rest of the year. Bierman spends most of the year as a substitute teacher in Susanville, Calif.

Steve Franke, 25, jumps on fires all summer, spends his winters running a ski tow at Lake Tahoe. Andrew Thorne, 31, is a smoke jumper May 15 to Oct. 1, a coin dealer the rest of the year. One of the Redding smoke jumpers is an architect; another works on an oil rig; one is a cowboy; some teach, farm or work as Park Service rangers in winter.

$7.20 to $11 an Hour

Pay for the smoke jumpers, who are on call 24 hours a day, ranges from $7.20 to $11 an hour. They get paid for a 40-hour week. There is no special jump pay.

It has been a busy summer so far for the Redding smoke jumpers. As few as two and as many as 16 at a time have been parachuted into 35 lightning fires in Northern California. Five of the Redding smoke jumpers were flown to Washington and Alaska to help snuff out fires deep in the wilderness.

The service traces its beginnings to 1939 in Winthrop, Wash., where David Godwin, then assistant chief of fire control for the U.S. Forest Service, launched a program of experimental parachute jumps in back country to fight forest fires.

On July 12, 1940, in Idaho’s Nezperce National Forest, Rufus Robinson and Earl Cooley made the first jump on a wilderness lightning strike.

In the intervening 47 years nearly 200,000 parachute jumps have been made by the small band of firefighters. And in all that time only two smoke jumpers have been killed parachuting from airplanes--Arden Davis in 1964 in Alaska and Tom Reginnetter in 1970 in Northern California.

The biggest loss of life for smoke jumpers occurred in August, 1949, when 15 successfully parachuted into the Mann Gulch fire north of Helena, Mont., and 13 of them were subsequently killed fighting the fire.

‘A Risky Occupation’

“It’s a risky occupation. You get hung up in trees. Bones are broken. Smoke jumpers get burned in fires. Injuries are to be expected,” said Dave Nani, 46, a member of the outfit since 1963.

Yet the job attracts hundreds of applicants each year for the few open slots. Applicants must be at least 18, range from 5-foot-2 to 6-foot-5 in height, weigh less than 200 pounds and be in top physical condition. Two years of wild fire fighting experience is required.

Deanne Shulman of Los Angeles became the first female smoke jumper in 1981 and nine other women have joined the ranks since.