Smokejumpers Get Ready For Fire Season -- Parachuting Firefighters Prepare To Observe Half-Century Of Service

TWISP, Okanogan County - Smokejumper Kasey Rose knocked herself into convulsions during a hard parachute landing last year.

But she quickly recovered and spent the next couple of days digging a line of dirt around a forest fire.

Such is the glamorous life of the only female at the North Cascades Smokejumper Base.

``I was weak and had headaches for a couple days,'' said Rose. ``But they could see my pupils were fine.''

It has been 50 years since Earl Cooley and Rufus Robinson became the first forest firefighters to leap from a plane. Now the elite strike force has about 400 members scattered at eight bases in the West, poised to be airborne within eight minutes of a distress call.

It is a mostly male world of bravado and high adventure.

``I jump from planes and beat on flames,'' said Steve Baker, a third-year smokejumper, displaying the swagger that comes naturally at this rustic base near spectacular North Cascades National Park.

Most of the time the jumpers parachute in teams of two to fires of less than one acre. They use shovels and axes for the work of containing the flames. Their mission is to prevent a small fire in a remote area from turning into an inferno.

Jumpers need strength, endurance, must be unafraid of heights and able to think clearly on a remote mountain where help may not arrive for days. They must be experienced enough to avoid becoming trapped by the flames.

The rewards can be $10,000 in wages and overtime during a busy fire season, even though pay averages just $8 per hour.

But there are risks. Twelve smokejumpers died in Montana's Helena National Forest in 1949, when a fire turned on them while they were on the ground.

Cooley, now 78, was the ``spotter'' on that jump, directing where the smokejumpers would be placed. He returned to the base in the plane after they jumped.

``The fire came up on three sides of them,'' Cooley, who has written a book on smokejumping, recalled. ``It sucked the oxygen out of the air.''

The smokejumpers passed out from lack of oxygen before the fire burned them, he said.

``It worried me for a long time,'' he said of the disaster, but he noted that the deaths prompted the U.S. Forest Service to devise extensive new training requirements that have saved many lives since.

While deaths are rare, broken bones, back injuries and high-speed collisions with trees are occupational hazards.

The first actual smokejump occurred on July 12, 1940, in Idaho's Nez Perce National Forest. It followed a successful 1939 experiment at the North Cascades base. A plaque commemorating the experiment notes the idea was first described as a ``harebrained and risky scheme.''

Robinson died in 1987, but Cooley is a semi-retired real-estate agent in Missoula, Mont., which is the Forest Service smokejumper headquarters.

In a recent telephone interview, Cooley remembered that for him smokejumping almost ended the day it began.

Determined to jump that day despite the conditions, he and Robinson bailed out in very strong winds.

Cooley's parachute did not open properly until he was just 600 feet from the ground, and then the strong winds carried him right through the branches of a tree, he recalled. ``I grabbed the branches and climbed down the tree.''

Cooley, who jumped 46 times from 1940 to 1951, said he signed up for the smokejumpers as a University of Montana student because of the high pay, and had never been in an airplane or seen a parachute jump before. He said he was never afraid.

``I don't know why, but it never bothered me in the least,'' he said. ``I figured if I got out of the plane and the old chute opened I'd be all right.''

The U.S. Army studied the smokejumpers in setting up its first airborne troop units in World War II, and the idea has since been copied in Russia, Sweden and other countries, said Jud Moore at the Forest Service in Missoula.

``The slots in parachutes that permit smokejumpers to guide their parachutes came out of this program,'' Moore said. So did the ``static line,'' which automatically pulls the ripcord as a jumper leaves the airplane, he said.

Women were first allowed to become smokejumpers in 1981, but there are still only a handful of them.

Rose, 22, with 22 jumps to her credit, is in her second year as a smokejumper.

At 5-foot-11 and 150 pounds, and as captain of a national champion rowing team at the University of Washington, she has the physical tools for the job. But acceptance has been difficult.

``I can keep up on the job,'' said the pre-med student. ``But I've heard them say it's the last male frontier.''

``I don't mind working with anybody as long as they work as hard as I do,'' said Baker, who is a student at the University of Montana. ``I treat her like anyone else on the crew.''

But jumper Sam Wiseman said only ``no comment'' when asked about Rose, and she acknowledged that her sex posed a problem for many of the men.

During a typical day at the base, the jumpers leap off a 75-foot tower, practicing exits from an airplane. The jerk of the harness simulates a parachute opening, and then they glide down a wire to the ground.

There are also two sessions of physical training, which are serious workouts involving weights, running and other exercises.

Jumpers work in teams of two, and they know that should one be injured the other has to be capable of carrying his partner to safety.

That is one complaint often leveled at Rose, but she said it isn't fair because she could carry a man a short distance, to a clearing where a helicopter would evacuate them.

``You'd never have to haul somebody around a mountain,'' she said. ``It tears me up when they cling to that.''

Just to qualify for training, a person must do seven chin-ups, 25 push-ups, 45 sit-ups and run a mile and a half in under 11 minutes, Rose noted.

Jumpers must learn to rappel down trees using a 150-foot rope, because their chutes sometimes become snagged in branches.

Despite the bravado, safety is a serious concern, and much of the training revolves around minimizing risk.

``Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane voluntarily is hazardous, so people who do it for a living take every possible precaution,'' said Arnold Hartigan of the Boise Interagency Fire Center, which coordinates forest fire response around the nation.

The jumpers receive 25 percent hazardous duty pay when they are actually at the fire line, but no extra pay for jumping out of the plane, he said.

The work is seasonal, so most jumpers must find other employment for eight or nine months of the year, he said. Many are students.

Jumper Bob Rivard also noted that jumpers are covered only by normal workers compensation insurance, and that most life insurance will not cover a jump-related death.

All smokejumpers start out as firefighters on ground crews, or ``groundpounders,'' said Baker, a veteran of 40 jumps in three years.

Hundreds apply each year for a handful of smokejumper openings. The waiting time can stretch to seven years.

If selected they receive parachute training, and live and work apart from ground crews. Besides Twisp and Missoula, there are bases at Redmond, Ore.; Redding, Calif.; Silver City, N.M.; McCall and Boise, Idaho; and Fairbanks, Alaska.

Once the smokejumpers hit the ground, however, the work quickly loses its glamour.

It is digging an 18-inch wide circle of dirt and rock around a roaring fire. Checking for hotspots often involves simply sticking a hand into embers to see if they are still burning.

The best jumps involve small fires, followed by a pleasant hike to the evacuation area. The worst are ``gobblers'' that take days and lots of equipment to suppress. Everything that is parachuted in must be carried out.

``We don't want to get too elitist,'' Rivard, 28, a veteran of 126 jumps, said. ``We're not immune to the ugly mop-up.''

For Cooley, today's smokejumpers don't have the commitment of the pioneers.

``They've lost all the esprit de corps,'' he said. ``They're more interested in recreation than working.''

Smokejumpers are also getting older.

Squad leader John Button said the average age is inching up from 22 to about 28 years old.

``You get a lot more experience, and that's good,'' said Button, 36, a veteran of 320 jumps in 15 years.

But long stays on the fire line become more troubling for older firefighters with children. And injuries, especially back problems, become more frequent.