Smokejumpers Gear Up Sewing Machines Are Humming As Firefighters Prepare For New Season
Just a few weeks before they return to their seasonal job of bailing out of airplanes to land on steep slopes full of burning trees, the smokejumpers of the U.S. Forest Service are consumed by an earthbound chore.
Hunched over ancient Singer sewing machines, men with bulging thighs and heavy-soled running shoes compare triathlon tips, grouse about Montana weather and sew. Before the West goes up in smoke again, parachutes have to be mended, packs customized, jump suits stitched together.
If the chatter and hum of sewing machines is a familiar springtime sound in the smokejumpers loft, much else has changed this year. The jumpers are trying to shake off the horrors of last season, the most deadly wildfire year in more than half a century. And they are preparing for a new role, as airborne firefighters.
Last July, some of the nation’s most elite firefighters were caught in a blowup at the South Canyon Fire near Glenwood Springs, Colo. Fourteen people died, including three smokejumpers. Fed by 40-mile-an-hour winds, the fire advanced at the rate of a mile every three minutes - far faster than any firefighter could run - and flames leaped to nearly 300 feet in height.
Among the lost smokejumpers was Don Mackey, a native Montanan, and veteran of more than 200 jumps. He was based here. The other two smokejumpers, Roger Roth and James Thrash, were stationed at the post in McCall, Idaho.
“Don’s death opened a lot of eyes,” said Jeff Kinderman, the acting base manager of the Missoula smokejumper center. “It really brought home the point that Mother Nature has no respect for the best plans of firefighters. After it happened, it made me wonder, ‘Why am I doing this?’ “
The oldest active smokejumper in Missoula, 50-year-old Roger Archibald, was a close friend of Mackey.
“I went through this compelling search to find out everything I could about the accident, all the details,” said Archibald, who spends the off season at his home in Philadelphia. “On the one hand, you say it’s unlikely to happen to me. On the other hand, there is a lot more trepidation now. And I think a lot of jumpers are more likely to question their orders.”
With those memories fresh, the jumpers are gearing up to execute a new plan to treat dying forests with controlled fires. Reflecting an emerging consensus that fire, as part of the natural cycle, may be healthier for many parts of the timbered West than a century of fire suppression has been, the Forest Service is talking about putting smokejumpers to work setting fires.
As envisioned by some Forest Service scientists, the smokejumpers would drop into a sickly, bug-infested forest, start a fire, then make sure it stayed under control. No final decision has been made, though, and if the policy is adopted, it will be on an experimental basis.
For now, the smokejumpers are watching weather reports in the Alaskan interior, where temperatures have already reached the mid-80s and the ground is brown and parched. And they are getting ready to break in the largest rookie class in years, 31 recruits, including a woman who is 45, an age once considered too old to jump.
Between long sewing sessions and extensive physical workouts, people are excited to be up in the air again, falling 17 feet a second, gliding next to cliffs, making pinpoint landings on meadows shared by grizzly bears.
“There is nothing as exciting, nothing in the world like jumping into an area where no other human being has been,” said Scott Belknap, a 13-year veteran. “We travel to places where people want to spend their vacations, and then we get a carnival ride to the ground.”
Belknap is 41, and looks sensible in a well-built, feet-firmly-on-the-ground kind of way. He is recently married and has a good retirement plan. But when he starts talking about jumping into wildfires, his eyes dance and the superlatives roll.
“Everyone here is an adventurer,” he said. “And I think everybody here has that Peter Pan Syndrome: they don’t want to grow up. We’re physical people who don’t like the idea of slowing down. So this is really the greatest job in the world.”
Smokejumpers take comfort in the odds. Since 1939, there have been more than 5,000 smokejumpers. Some have made nearly 300 jumps. Only three times in 56 years has there been an accidental death in jumping from the planes.
“I did the first jump, more than 50 years ago, with a couple other fellas, and I firmly believe it’s safer than walking the streets of Missoula,” said Earl Cooley, the 83-year-old president of the National Smokejumpers Association. They are planning a big reunion this summer in Missoula.
The disasters, for the most part, have been on the ground. The most famous was the Mann Gulch fire of 1949, chronicled by Norman Maclean in his 1992 book, “Young Men and Fire.” A crew of 15 smokejumpers dropped into a smoky canyon in central Montana on Aug. 5. A few hours later, all but two of them were dead, caught in a blowup when winds shifted and the fire roared through Mann Gulch.
Even those jumpers who do not talk about the deaths at Mann Gulch and South Canyon are reminded every day of what happened. On the wall here at the Missoula center is a giant, color photograph of the ashen remains of the slope at South Canyon where the firefighters died last year.
One reason that the fire season was horrendous last year, government scientists have said, was because the woods have been altered by years of fire suppression, logging, and replanting with tree species that are less fire resistant. Over the last few years, the Forest Service has undertaken a lot of soul-searching and scientific research over how to restore those forests.
One proposal - passed by Congress but threatened with a veto by President Clinton - would allow logging of all trees that are diseased, dying or have been burned in some way. Some jumpers, especially the passionate outdoorsmen among them, strongly object to that plan, which is favored by the timber industry.
Another idea is simply to allow fire to play more of its traditional role in nature, as a rejuvenating agent. If this idea is adopted, then the Smokejumpers would start fires in some areas to reduce the buildup of excessive, nonnative brush and wood. Few jumpers seem to object to that proposed change.
“People always use a war metaphor, but our relationship to fire is sort like that between a climber and a mountain,” Archibald said. “You have great respect for it. It’s not like some virus you’re trying to put in a vault and eradicate.”