Smokejumpers

A smokejumper is a wildland firefighter who parachutes into a remote area to combat wildfires.

Smokejumpers are most often deployed to fires that are extremely remote. The risks associated with this method of personnel deployment are mitigated by a training program that has been developed over more than 70 years. Smokejumpers are capable of reaching a wildfire shortly after ignition, when it is still relatively small, and extinguishing the blaze before it becomes a problem to land managers and the public. When there is no significant fire activity, smokejumpers will take on other assignments such as forestry, disaster relief and emergency management.

Smokejumpers are employed in large numbers by the Russian Federation and the United States Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Russia maintains more smokejumpers than any other nation in the world (several thousand) and claims the longest history of established smokejumping of any nation (reportedly established in 1936; smokejumping in the United States was established in 1939).

Prior to the full establishment of smokejumping, experiments with parachute insertion of firefighters were conducted in 1934 in Utah and in the Soviet Union. Earlier, aviation firefighting experiments had been conducted with air delivery of equipment and "water bombs." Although this first experiment was not pursued, another began in 1939 in Washington's Methow Valley, where professional parachutists jumped into a variety of timber and mountainous terrain, proving the feasibility of the idea. This also saw the first Forest Service employee jumper, Francis Lufkin, who was originally hired as a climber to extract the professional parachutists from the trees. It is believed that he made this first jump on a dare from the parachutists.

The following year, in 1940, permanent jump operations were established at Winthrop, Washington, and Ninemile Camp, an abandoned Civilian Conservation Corps camp (Camp Menard) located a mile north of the Forest Service's Ninemile Remount Depot (pack mule) at Huson, Montana, about thirty miles northwest of Missoula. The first actual fire jumps in the history of smokejumping were made by Rufus Robinson and Earl Cooley at Rock Pillar near Marten Creek in the Nez Perce National Forest on July 12, 1940, out of Ninemile, followed shortly by a two-man fire jump out of Winthrop. In subsequent years, the Ninemile Camp operation moved to Missoula, where it became the Missoula Smokejumper Base. The Winthrop operation remained at its original location, as North Cascades Smokejumper Base. The "birthplace" of smokejumping continues to be debated between these two bases, the argument having persisted at this time for approximately 70 years.

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Wikipedia