60 Years of Smoke Jumping Began in Ridicule, Disbelief

In 1935, regional forester Evan Kelley dismissed the idea of dropping men from airplanes to fight remote wildfires.

“In the first place, the best information I can get from experienced fliers is that all parachute jumpers are more or less crazy--just a little bit unbalanced, otherwise they wouldn’t be engaged in such a hazardous undertaking,” Kelley wrote to his superiors in the U.S. Forest Service.

Five years later, two Idaho smoke jumpers parachuted in to fight a forest fire for the first time.

As smoke jumpers celebrate their profession’s 60th anniversary this year, they retain something of the gonzo attitude that seems part of anyone who voluntarily jumps out of a perfectly good airplane.

The danger was illustrated April 27 in Alaska. David S. Liston’s parachute failed to open during a training jump, killing him. The 28-year-old Bureau of Land Management smoke jumper was the first to die in a jump-related accident since 1991.

Despite the inherent risk, smoke jumpers say changes in technology and training during the last decade have made things safer in the air. And there is a new emphasis on safety and fire science on the ground since three smoke jumpers were among the 14 firefighters killed by a 1994 fire near Glenwood Springs, Colo.

“The premise today is no different than it was in 1940,” said Redding Base Commander Arlen Cravens. “Our whole mission, really, is to hit ‘em hard and keep ‘em small. . . . It all boils down to if you can get the proper number of firefighters to the fire early, they can usually put those fires out very easily and very cheaply.”

For the first time, the U.S. Forest Service is formally examining the balance between its World War II-era smoke jumper program and more modern methods of flying firefighters to remote areas with helicopters.

“The smoke jumpers have been around for 60 years, and nobody’s ever looked at that,” said Buck Latapie, the Forest Service’s assistant director for fire planning. “From the study it looks like, yeah, they’re still a pretty good deal from a cost-benefit standpoint.”

Recommendations include adding about 60 jumpers to the roughly 400 who work for the Forest Service and the BLM, said Mike Apicello, a review team member and spokesman for the Forest Service’s Fire and Aviation Management Program.

“When I became a smoke jumper in 1977 there was a lot of talk about smoke jumping becoming a dinosaur and on its last legs. That hasn’t happened,” said Cravens, whose base will play host to smoke jumpers’ national reunion June 16-18.

Smoke jumpers at the Redding base can be airborne in about 12 minutes and reach fires throughout Oregon and most of California’s Sierra within about two hours, without refueling. That’s often quicker than nearby firefighters can reach remote areas, even those accessible by rough roads, and cheaper than flying in helicopters.

A planeload of 12 smoke jumpers can hit four or five fires ignited by a lightning storm. A three-person team typically controls a small fire the first day using hand tools and chain saws dropped in on cargo parachutes. They mop up the next day, pack their gear into 110-pound duffel bags and hike out.

Rachel Smith weighs barely 10 pounds more than her duffel bag and, at the minimum 5 feet tall, stands just inches above her pack. But the 19-year-old premed major from Walla Walla, Wash., is one of two women in this year’s nine-member Redding rookie class. The first female smoke jumper joined in 1981, and about 25% of Forest Service jumpers are now women; about 5% of BLM jumpers are women.

To qualify as a smoke jumper, Smith had to carry her 110-pound duffel bag three miles in 90 minutes. She made it in 73 minutes.

“We all have our different challenges out there,” she said. “I think anybody who is doing this should be able to pull their own weight. The only way I’d wash out is if I feel I’d be a danger to others.”

The clothing and equipment smoke jumpers use look and function much like the leather helmets and cotton-duck jumpsuits of the early smoke jumpers. Where wilderness regulations bar the use of chain saws, the smoke jumpers still use crosscut saws long ago nicknamed “misery whips.”

There have been improvements. Bulletproof Kevlar fabric now reinforces the jumpsuits, and plastic braces have reduced once-common ankle injuries. The circular Forest Service parachutes now come in three sizes and can be steered to safer landing zones; netting added to the bottom of the new parachutes has cut tangling problems.

Forest Service jump injuries declined two-thirds during the last decade, from one for each 133 jumps in 1992 to one for each 400 jumps last year, with a similar decline for BLM jumpers.

Both jump-related deaths during the last decade involved BLM wing-shaped parachutes, though the April 27 death remains under investigation. BLM spokesman Mike Tupper said the rectangular parachutes handle double the wind speeds of the circular Forest Service parachutes and are more suitable for the windy open grasslands overseen by his agency.

Smoke jumpers once communicated with circling airplanes by laying out brightly colored fabric in various patterns. The pilot signaled back by gunning his engine or dipping a wing. Now each smoke jumper carries a two-way radio, and some are experimenting with cellular telephones and satellite-guided global positioning systems.

Rookies used to make seven training jumps; since 1998, they make 15. Before they ever leave the ground, they practice steering their parachutes using a computer-assisted video game. Soon they may be using virtual reality helmets to simulate the parachute’s descent.

That’s a big difference from the training Earl Cooley of Missoula, Mont., had before he made the first fire jump on July 12, 1940, into Idaho’s Nez Perce National Forest. His trainer hung a ‘chute in a tree to point out the harness, shroud lines and release handles, then said, “Tomorrow we jump.”

“We didn’t know just what we were doing,” recalled Cooley, 88, who wrote a book about his 38 years with the Forest Service, 20 of them with the smoke jumpers. “The wind was blowing so hard it twisted my risers up back of my head. I was going so fast I was almost in free fall.”

As Cooley desperately hunched forward to release his emergency parachute, the motion freed his risers and he broke his fall in a pine tree. He went on to make 48 more fire jumps.

Sixty years later, smoke jumpers’ newest recruits say the training is tougher, but the allure remains.

“You always hear smoke jumping is the top of the list, the top of the line,” said David Johnson, 28, of Whitefish, Mont., one of nine rookies practicing his jumps at the Redding base. “There’s definitely tradition there. I would always want to be on top.”