Smokejumpers at Front of Fire Fight

Sunday, August 1, 1999

MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) -- The first line of defense in battling U.S. forest fires are some 400 smokejumpers stationed at bases throughout the West.

Three-quarters of them work for the Forest Service and are based in Missoula and West Yellowstone, Mont.; Winthrop, Wash.; Grangeville and McCall, Idaho; Redmond, Ore.; and Redding, California.

The Bureau of Land Management employs the rest, who are based in Alaska and Idaho. The BLM began its own smokejumper program in 1958 in Alaska, where the agency manages millions of acres. It was modeled on the Forest Service program, and the two agencies continue to cooperate in wildland firefighting.

Facts about smokejumpers:

• Candidates undergo rigorous paramilitary training and physical conditioning. Most rookie instruction focuses on parachuting, since recruits must already know how to fight forest fires.
• In an average five- or six-month fire season, a smokejumper can earn $14,000; a severe fire season, with overtime and hazard pay for jumping, could bring double that amount.
• By the end of the 1998 fire season, more than 250,000 successful jumps had been logged. There have been three fatalities during descent.
• The smokejumper corps very nearly didn't get off the ground. In 1935, when the Forest Service was experimenting with the idea, Montana regional forester Evan Kelley wrote to Washington asking to be rid of the program in his territory. ``All parachute jumpers are more or less crazy,'' Kelley wrote, ``just a little bit unbalanced, otherwise they wouldn't be engaged in such a hazardous undertaking.''