A member of the Avialesookhrana, Russia's aerial firefighting organization, leaps toward Siberia's boreal forest from an An-2 biplane. "The idea of actually parachuting into fires was a Soviet invention," says American wildfire historian Stephen Pyne. "In the 1930s these guys would climb out onto the wing of a plane, jump off, land in the nearest village, and rally the villagers to go fight the fire." Photo: Mark Thiessen/National Geographic

National Geographic has a great article about fighting wildland fires in Russia, specifically, smokejumping in Russia, where they have 4,000 jumpers working out of 340 bases across the country. According to the article written by Glenn Hodges, who with a photographer spent over three weeks observing and camping with the firefighters, it is a whole different world compared to fighting fire in the United States or Canada.

Here are some excerpts from the article, which is a must read:

It’s a shoestring operation—just $32 million a year to cover 11 time zones, less than the United States might spend in a few days of a heavy wildfire season. But with their mismatched uniforms and 50-year-old biplanes, Russian smokejumpers do what their countrymen do so well: make do with less. Less money, less equipment, and yes, less caution—even with fire.

When we break camp the next day to return to Shushenskoye, I’m surprised to see that the campfire is left smoldering. It’s a hot July day, which would be bad enough without the helicopter’s rotor wash blowing everything all over the place, but the risk doesn’t even seem to register with Alex, central Siberia’s most powerful firefighting official. In the U.S., firefighters would douse a fire on an ice floe in the dead of winter, especially with journalists around. But here they play the odds the way they see them, and perfect safety is burdensome and unnecessary. Fire shelters and fireproof clothing? Too expensive, but that’s OK, because the odds of needing them are low. Seat belts? Impractical. Thousands of times you will buckle and unbuckle, and probably for nothing. Campfire? It’s not going anywhere.

and…

The smokejumpers are true woodsmen—hunting, fishing, and trapping sable in the off-season to make ends meet, as nimble with an ax and knife as they are with their hands. When they land at a fire and make camp, they don’t just make tent poles and shovel handles from saplings, they make tables, benches, shelves—you name it. I’m amazed to see one guy make a watertight mug out of birch bark.

It’s a good thing their outdoor skills are solid, because their equipment often isn’t. When we return from the fire line, Valeriy discovers that one of his brand-new experimental smokejumper boots has melted. The rubber sole is a mash of black goo. His boots lasted “an hour, at best” he says angrily, before launching into a torrent of complaint about poor Russian equipment. “This tent like from Second World War,” he says, pointing at the canvas tent that will welcome mosquitoes and rain into our lives for days to come. The tents have no mosquito netting, the chain saws are heavy and unwieldy, the backpacks have no waist straps, the pull-on boots are made of cheap synthetic leather (and feet must be wrapped in towels to make them fit), the clothing is neither fire retardant nor water resistant. And everything is heavy.

Dale Longanecker retired last week after making 896 jumps out of perfectly good airplanes. Longanecker made his last jump out of the North Cascades Smokejumper Base when he reached the mandatory retirement age of 57. Here is an excerpt from an article in the New York Times:

WINTHROP, Wash. — Kristy Longanecker smiled while her husband fell from the clear blue sky.

Dale Longanecker, 57, is retiring after 38 years as a smoke jumper with the United States Forest Service.

“He got to live his dream,” said Ms. Longanecker, barely bothering to watch. “I’m envious of that sometimes. How many people get to live their dream?”

Thump.

So ended jump No. 896 — one final shock to the skeleton, one final perfect parachute roll, a practice run with no more reason to practice. Last month, Dale Longanecker turned 57, the mandatory retirement age for firefighters employed by the United States Forest Service. Friday was his last day on the job, and his was not just another retirement.

Mr. Longanecker has spent 38 years as one of the most elite of his kind, a smoke jumper. He has parachuted out of airplanes into some of the most remote wildfires in the West carrying little more than a shovel, a gallon of water and a bottle of ibuprofen. He was 19 when he made his first jump, and the Forest Service says his 896 jumps — 362 of which were into fires — are a record that may never be broken.

This photo on the GreatFallsTribune web site got my attention. The caption reads as follows:

Smokejumpers head for an open landing area during the early stages of last season’s Rat Patch Fire deep in the Missouri River Breaks. BLM PHOTO

I am not certain there are any smokejumpers in the photo — it may be para-cargo. Regardless, unless there is a green meadow or no vegetation in that drop zone, it seems like an odd choice for a place to insert people OR cargo — between two fingers of fire. But, it’s difficult to tell much from the photo.

The picture was attached to an article about the outlook for the wildfire season in Montana. Here is an excerpt:

Above-average precipitation and snowpack that contributed to severe flooding this spring in Montana likely will ease the severity of the wildfire season.

However, the season is beginning to heat up after getting a late start because of wet conditions, according to the Northern Rockies Coordination Center in Missoula.

The center, which coordinates fire resources and predicts severity of the fire season for the region, is forecasting a below-average to average fire season in the Northern Rockies because of the cool, wet spring, coupled with the heavy snowpack.

Moist conditions slowed the usual July 4 beginning of the fire season by two weeks, said Bryan Henry, a predictive service meteorologist for the Northern Rockies Coordination Center.

Wildfires burn about 160,000 acres in a normal year in the Northern Rockies.

“We’re probably looking at that or maybe less,” Henry said.

Hastings fire. Two smokejumpers approaching landing zone in clearing with smoke column in background. 5-31-2011. Photo: Mike McMillan

The Hastings fire has burned to within three miles of a subdivision and five miles from the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline northwest of Fairbanks, Alaska. Residents of the subdivision of about a dozen homes were asked to evacuate on Monday.

(Click to enlarge) Hastings fire. View from Spinach Creek & Murphy Dome; 6-7-2011. Photo: Mike McMillan

Here is a report from InciWeb at 10 a.m. on June 7:

Fire managers made heavy use of firefighting aircraft on Monday. Air tankers dropped 65,000 gallons of water and retardant on the fire’s flanks to slow its progress. Helicopters provided additional air support, moving crews and supplies to the fire. As there is no road access to this fire, aircraft are critical to the firefighting effort. Seven additional firefighting crews arrived to reinforce the crews already on the line.

The Hastings Fire is now 12,770 17,624 acres and eight per cent contained. The fire is most active on the north and northeast flanks, and is about three miles from the Hayes Creek Subdivision and five miles from the Alaska Pipeline. The fire is burning between the Chatanika River and Washington Creek.

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The New Zealand Herald has an article about the North Cascades Smokejumpers in Washington state, in which she compares smokejumpers to firefighters who “slide down a pole at the station” and ride in a truck to the fire. She wonders if the latter is “firefighting for wimps”.

Here is how the article begins.

Pamela Wade discovers modest fire-fighting heroes in a Wild West town.

A Western figure in Winthrop, Washington State. Photo / Pamela Wade

If it weren’t so obvious that there’s not an ounce of fat on them, it would be tempting to call Washington state’s North Cascades Smokejumpers well-rounded: how else to describe men who not only leap from a small plane to parachute into dense forest wreathed in the smoke from a wildfire, but can also execute a nifty bit of top-stitching on the sewing machines back at base?

They have to make their own jumpsuits in this service because there are only 400 smokejumpers in the whole of the US and there’s not much call, commercially, for yellow Kevlar boiler suits with capacious pockets, weighing more than 80kg fully packed.

Standard equipment includes a rope for rappelling down out of trees and a knife to slice through tangles, making sliding down a pole at the station and getting into a truck look like fire-fighting for wimps…

All images are screen grabs from "Smokejumpers", courtesy of CMT

Did anyone see the premier of the “Smokejumpers” special on Country Music Television (CMT) last night? As we told you on April 20, CMT spent a lot of time with the Missoula, Montana smokejumpers in 2008 and collected a great deal of video footage. The one-hour program last night may have been the beginning and end of “Smokejumpers”, but there is a chance that it could turn into a full-year of episodes.

All-night line construction training. The caption on the screen is a trainer providing commentary on the quality of the line that is being dug.

I thoroughly enjoyed the program. It had some great video of smokejumpers training, jumping, and being interviewed about their work. The quality and the production values were excellent; very professional, as you would expect from a television network, even without taking into account that it was on a network with “music” in the title.

Often, cameras were attached to the jumpers as they parachuted. We got to see up close and personal views as they glided to the ground, and occasionally crashed through tree branches.

The program was primarily about early fire season training for rookies, with a few interviews of veterans thrown in. The second half focused on a rookie that was doing fine except for the landings, or the “parachute landing fall”, called “PLF” on the show. The editing of the show was leading us to believe that she was going to flunk out, since mostly what was being shown was unsatisfactory PLF’s. But then at the end, there she was in the graduation ceremony, wearing a fire shirt with a tie like the other rookies that passed. I guess they needed to manufacture some drama to make the program as interesting as possible.

Missoula smokejumper rookie training graduation, 2008

Here are some quotes from the show:

I. Love. This. Job. It’s not a job really. It’s a damn good time, to get a paycheck on top of it.

There’s no crying in firefighting.

The program will be a great recruiting tool for smokejumpers. The jumpers they interviewed were constantly saying how much they loved their work. The agencies are going to be inundated with inquiries about how to become a smokejumper.

If you missed the program last night, the full episode is available for viewing on the CMT website. It is about 42 minutes long, with a few short commercials.

Below are more images from the program.
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