What is a smokejumper?
A smokejumper is a wildland firefighter who parachutes into remote areas to combat wildfires.
The Forest Service Intermountain Regional Forester T.V. Pearson first proposed Smokejumping in 1934. The smokejumper program was started as a means to quickly reach and make an initial attack on fires burning in remote or difficult to access areas. The program started in 1939 in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, and the first fire jump was made in 1940 in the Nez Perce National Forest in Idaho. Most of the fires fought by smokejumper crews are small, with the intention to quickly suppress the fire before it grows into a larger, more dangerous blaze.
Depending on the size of the fire, a crew of smokejumpers typically ranging from two to sixteen will be dispatched. Most often, the smokejumpers are flown to the site of a fire via airplane. After judging the wind, and selecting a safe jump site, the crewmember known as a "spotter" determines when the firefighters will jump from the aircraft. Once on the ground, cargo boxes are dropped from the plane, containing food, water, tools and firefighting gear, allowing the jumpers to be fully self-sufficient for 48 hours. The smokejumpers then set to controlling the fire, sometimes working a fire line for 12-16 hour shifts round the clock when combating a larger blaze.
There are over 270 smokejumpers working from Forest Service Bases in Idaho, California, Oregon and Washington, and at bases maintained by the Bureau of Land Management in Boise, Idaho and Fairbanks, Alaska.
A smokejumper is a wildland firefighter who is trained to deploy from fixed wing aircraft. Several nations including the United States, Canada, Russia, and Mongolia maintain large numbers of smoke jumpers on the national payroll to handle outbreaks of fires in remote regions which are difficult to access. This job, as you might imagine, can be extremely dangerous, and it is also considered to be very glamorous by some people, since it combines the skills of firefighting with the daring to leap from aircraft into the path of an oncoming fire. As a career, smokejumping dates back to around the late 1930s, when several countries started experimenting with using smokejumpers to handle forest fires. Typical smokejumping teams handle small fires, working quickly to put them out so that they do not spread; a smokejumping team may also decide to call in reinforcements if it becomes clear that they will not be able to control the fire. They typically work in rugged, remote terrain which is diff
