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.
Click to continue »

Smokejumpers from the Missoula, Montana base are going to star in a new one-hour special on CMT, appropriately named SMOKEJUMPERS, on Friday night, April 23 at 10 p.m., ET/PT. Currently planned to be just a one-time special, the senior vice president of programming for CMT, Mary Beth Cunin, was quoted as saying that if the special is successful, they could green-light the show for a full year of episodes.

In 2008, a film crew from Megalomedia followed the Missoula jumpers as they trained and fought fires. They did not parachute from a DC-3, Shorts Sherpa C-23, or Twin Otter aircraft with the jumpers, but met them on the ground at fires. (Two smokejumper bases have USFS-owned DC-3 aircraft that have been converted to turbo prop machines–Missoula and McCall, Idaho.)

I talked with Missoula smokejumper Rogers Warren who explained that in 2008 the film crew had a special use permit from the US Forest Service which made it possible for them to film the jumpers and later use the footage for commercial purposes. A public affairs officer from the USFS accompanied the film crew most of the time.

Here is an excerpt from a press release from CMT about the program:

NASHVILLE – April 7, 2010 – CMT’s Friday night is getting hotter with the premiere of a new one-hour special, SMOKEJUMPERS, premiering on Friday, April 23 at 10:00 p.m., ET/PT. The special is the third piece of programming in CMT’s newly branded Friday night of adventure programming, CMT ADVENTURE COUNTRY, and immediately follows new episodes of GATOR 911 and DANGER COAST.

With hand tools, explosives, and the ability to think fast on their feet, SMOKEJUMPERS have one job – to contain the fire they are set to extinguish. But first, they must get there by parachuting into often unchartered territory and treacherous forests and mountains. The men and women of SMOKEJUMPERS show how they can often be the only hope to stop a fire burning out of control, and why they are the most important lines of defense against one of the deadliest natural disasters. Success means saving land, but failure could mean losing lives, property and costing millions of dollars in damage. The one-hour special, offers an inside look at this dangerous profession – from the nervous rookie jumper, to the twenty-year veteran, the thrill-seeking big-wave surfer, and the family man with a master’s degree. These SMOKEJUMPERS share one goal – to stop a potentially devastating and dangerous force of nature.

SMOKEJUMPERS is produced by Megalomedia, with Jonathan Nowzaradan as Executive Producer. Melanie Moreau and Bob Kusbit serve as Executive Producers for CMT.

The Danger Coast series, which follows waterborne firefighters with the Miami-Dade Fire Department, also looks interesting. Episode #102 will air Friday, April 23, at 9:30 ET, just before Smokejumpers.

Here are some photos from the CMT Smokejumper site:

More photos are below. Click to continue »

Photo: The Earl Cooley family

Another article has appeared about the life of Earl Cooley, one of the first smokejumpers, who died on November 9 at the age of 98. This one is in, surprisingly, The Economist, a British publication. Here is how it begins:

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SEEN from the height of a passenger jet, the mountains of Idaho and western Montana look like the grey, wrinkled hide of a dinosaur. Closer up, from a twin-engine aircraft, those wrinkles become thousands of conifers marching over the steep and broken ground. Closer still—“My God! My chute’s not opening! Something’s wrong!”—that’s a spruce you’re plunging into, your tardy parachute lines tangling round your neck and your flailing legs kicking off branches a hundred feet above the ground. Luckily, you’re alive. Luckier still, you have a rope in your trouser pocket that lets you rappel down from the tree. And you haven’t even got to the fire yet.

Such was Earl Cooley’s introduction, on July 12th 1940 when he was 28, to the completely new science of smokejumping. After years spent trying to douse the forest fires of America’s West from aircraft—labouring skywards with water stowed in five-gallon cans and beer barrels—this was the first attempt to parachute firefighters to blazes too remote to reach by road. In the 22 years Mr Cooley was to spend doing it, it was also his closest call. He reflected later that if the spruce had not saved him, the smokejumping programme itself would not have survived—let alone become the success it is today, with 1,432 jumps made for the Forest Service last year. Back then, too many people thought it crazy. One Montana regional forester, a big-shot called Evan Kelly, had already complained to Washington that it was a waste of “honest suppression money”—dollars spent putting out fires in the old, plodding, non-flamboyant way.

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The rest of the article is HERE.

Thanks Jim

The Missoulian has an excellent article about a program at the Missoula smokejumper base which introduces kids to the concept of jumping out of perfectly good airplanes into forest fires. (Is this child abuse?)

Here is an excerpt:

Fourteen-year-old Gunnar Nabozney took a Junior Smokejumper class a few days ago.

Eight-year-old Molly White smiles behind the mask of a jump helmet at the end of her Junior Smokejumper camp last week. Photo by KURT WILSON/Missoulian

It’s not entirely clear he needed it, as he seemed to already know plenty about fires, airplanes and parachutes.

“Isn’t this the same system that paratroopers used in World War II?” Nabozney asked smokejumper Travis Parker as the class looked about a DC-3 jump plane.

“Pretty much, although we do things a little differently than they did,” a surprised Parker said to Nabozney, one of five kids taking part in the class sponsored by the U.S. Forest Service Smokejumper Center. “In fact, they learned how to do this by watching how we did it way back then.”

Despite his wealth of knowledge, Gunnar, his brother Joren and three other youngsters learned a lot during the one-day smokejumper program.

“We’ve had about 100 kids go through this this summer, and they really seem to enjoy it,” said Molly Cottrell, who taught the class with an assist from Parker and folks at the National Weather Service.

The kids come away with a heightened sense of what it means to be a smokejumper. But they also learned about fire, its behavior and how that behavior is influenced by weather.

“It’s pretty neat stuff,” 10-year-old Joren Nabozney said.

Thanks Dick

KGW.com has an article about a smokejumper that you should read. Sara Brown, on her 88th jump, collided with another jumper while decending to a fire. Her chute collapsed, she fell from 100 feet, and shattered her right leg.

She has endured a lengthy recovery, but last week, she was honored with the Smokejumper Courage Award from the National Smokejumpers Association