Death Waits as Smoke Jumpers Play With Fire : The West: They cheat death one jump at a time. Each summer, they parachute into dozens of lightning-sparked blazes in otherwise inaccessible mountains.

Thinking back to July 6, as Mike Tupper often does these days, the forest fire looked routine, not like a hellish mass killer.

But when Tupper sent smoke jumpers parachuting from a plane to the fire that July day near Glenwood Springs, Colo., two would never return. The two, and a third jumper from another plane, were among 14 firefighters who died when overrun by flames.

Tupper hangs his head, his shoulder-length hair falling over an earring, his flashing smile and swashbuckling gait both gone. Even now, the 35-year-old smoke jumper from Fairbanks, Alaska, feels responsible, but knows he’s not.

His job as spotter that day was to pick a safe parachute-landing site. He did. The jumpers did not die until evening.

Tupper recalls the other jumpers’ faces when they heard of the deaths. “You can tell when somebody is about to cry,” he said during a recent rotation through the regional base in Redding, 200 miles north of San Francisco.

But none admit to crying, at least publicly. These are members of an elite federal smoke-jumper corps, each some mix of paratrooper, lumberjack, pioneer and adventurer. They describe themselves as boisterous, obnoxious, loud and funny, for starters.

They say their off-duty antics, often tied to drinking, are legendary with locals. Bars and restaurants name sandwiches after them and put memorabilia up on walls. Jumpers know each others’ families. They attend each others’ weddings and funerals.

During quiet, private moments--and never in front of one another--they admit to thoughts that they cheat death one jump at a time, one fire at a time. Each summer, they parachute into dozens of lightning-sparked blazes in otherwise inaccessible mountains.

“To be a smoke jumper, you need a lot of luck,” Tupper said.

He once was dragged behind a plane in snarled parachute lines, banging against the fuselage before dropping to a successful landing. “Two days later, it came to me: ‘God, I could have died,’ ” he said.

The jumpers killed recently in Colorado were the first to die by fire since a dozen perished in the 1949 Mann Gulch blaze in Montana.

After a jump, the firefighters fell trees, chop brush and scrape grass with hand tools and muscle for hours, or days. After encircling and quelling each blaze, they sometimes hike out many miles with hundred-pound packs bearing equipment that was dropped to them.

The main lure is excitement.

“I’m an admitted Adrenalin junkie,” said Ken Perkins, a 48-year-old veteran jumper who is recovering from shoulder, arm, neck and back injuries from a 1993 training jump.

“People aren’t doing it for the big bucks at all,” said Walt Smith, the 47-year-old Redding base manager, a 25-year jumper from Missoula, Mont.

The pay starts at $9 an hour for the standard daytime shifts, five days a week. It goes up at fires with overtime pay.

There are just 387 jumpers in the nation, and Dana Lucas, a first-year jumper, is one of only about 10 women.

“I’m doing what’s unexpected for a woman,” said Lucas, 24, of Richmond, Va. “When I’m keeping up with the guys, I also feel I’m working harder. I feel proud.”

Most jumpers are not year-round federal workers. Some are students and teachers on break during fire season. Others leave jobs such as insurance agent and chiropractor. Some use jump money to finance winter activities, ranging from rock climbing in Mexico to selling art in Redding.

At the Redding base, hundreds of people applied this season for only nine openings. Most of the successful applicants were already firefighters with other outfits.

The jumpers shuffle between the nine U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management regional jumper bases throughout the West. When fires hit, bosses decide where to dispatch jumpers and how many to send.

Smoke jumpers are federally certified to fell huge trees. They also become expert at climbing into and out of them. They overhaul their chain saws themselves, and hone shovels and other hand tools to a razor edge. They even have invented some of their hand tools.

The jumpers have designed suits, made partly of the same material that goes into bulletproof vests, to protect them when they accidentally parachute into trees. They sew the suits and just about everything else--their packs, tool harnesses, parachutes. One jumper made his wife a dress in his spare time.

Parachutes, and secondary reserve parachutes, are crucial parts of a jumper’s gear, and the jumpers’ methods must meet Federal Aviation Administration regulations.

Forest Service jumpers use round parachutes and must bail out of planes at 1,500 feet above the ground. Bureau of Land Management jumpers use rectangular parachutes and have to leave the plane at 3,000 feet. A mixed crew has to be dropped at two different altitudes.

Both types of parachutes can be steered by pulling the shroud lines, and jumpers practice parachuting in various ways, including use of a computer simulator.

Some parachutes are used to drop supplies to the firefighters immediately after they have jumped. Cardboard cargo boxes contain everything from paper sleeping bags to food. The menu ranges from freeze-dried mocha mousse pie to canned cabbage rolls with sauce.

The challenge of landing cargo on target is the best part of the job to pilot Andy Johnston, 50, of Big Fork, Mont.

“It’s like shooting pool,” said Johnston, who flies a Spanish-built military cargo plane that he has dubbed “a Winnebago with wings.”

Johnston and the jumpers never stray far from that Winnebago when on duty. If the call comes, they have to be airborne in 10 minutes.

But when there are no fires, jumpers must wait, do chores and work out.

Said Boyd Burtch, a 30-year-old jumper from Missoula, Mont., “It’s not the fires that are hard. It’s the waiting.”