Ben Elkind was seriously injured during a training parachute jump on May 15. During his ninth year as a smokejumper (with six years before that on a hotshot crew) he sustained a dislocated hip and pelvic fracture during a hard landing. During surgery at the hospital they found six fractures and placed three plates and 10 screws to repair the damage.
While Ben is unable to fight fires for an extended length of time, he will not be able to supplement his base income with the usual 1,000 hours of overtime each year which in the past he has depended on to support his wife and two small children.
And then during a full body CT scan a nodule was discovered on his thyroid — meaning, cancer. Ben told Wildfire Today the cancer was caught early and is very treatable.
We have written about Ben previously, but that was before we were aware of the cancer. And the other reason we’re bringing it up now is that yesterday NBC News published a nearly four-minute video story about Ben and other similar examples of injured wildland firefighters.
For more than the last year Ben has been very involved working to improve the working conditions of federal wildland firefighters, being proactive in educating the public and other firefighters about what they can do to improve the pay, classification, health, well-being, and processing of worker’s compensation claims (see photo below). In 2021 he wrote an article that was published in The Oregonian and Wildfire Today. And now he finds himself as one of the examples of what can happen on the job to a wildland firefighter that can seriously affect them and their family.
NFFE meets with Secretary of Labor in Washington, DC, March 16, 2022. L to R: Max Alonzo (NFFE), Bob Beckley (NFFE), Hannah Coolidge (USFS Hotshot), Marty Walsh (Sec. Of Labor), Dane Ostler (USFS – Prevention), Ben Elkind (USFS – Smokejumper), Randy Erwin (NFFE – President), and Jeff Friday (NFFE).
There has been some progress during the last year in establishing a list of presumptive diseases for firefighters.
Pending legislation would create the presumption that firefighters who become disabled by certain serious diseases, contracted them on the job, including heart disease, lung disease, certain cancers, and other infectious diseases. The bipartisan Federal Firefighters Fairness Act, H.R. 2499, passed the House in May and is now in the Senate.
In April the Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCP), in FECA Bulletin No. 22-07, established a list of cancers and medical conditions for which the firefighter does not have to submit proof that their disease was caused by an on the job injury.
Consider telling your Senators and Representative to pass the Tim Hart Wildland Firefighter Classification and Pay Parity Act, H.R.5631. The name of the bill honors smokejumper Tim Hart who died after being injured on a fire in New Mexico in 2021. (More about the bill.) And ask your Senators to pass the Federal Firefighters Fairness Act, H.R. 2499.
You may want to make a donation to the gofundme account set up by the Redmond Smokejumper Welfare Organization to assist Ben and his family.
Tim Hart, a smokejumper, died June 2, 2021 after being critically injured during a hard landing while parachuting into the Eicks Fire in New Mexico. One of his friends and co-workers has written a tribute to Tim.
By Patrick McGunagle
One intuits the magnitude of Tim Hart’s line of duty death immediately: Smokejumper passes away after fire jump in New Mexico. It’s something that shouldn’t have been, a system error; there must be some mistake. This isn’t how one of us should go, somehow not the same as the tragedies we wildland fire folk take so much care to avoid: crushed by snags, rolling rocks, burnover. There’s a randomness here that we don’t yet understand. As Pam Hart stated so eloquently in her eulogy for her son:
“For Tim, on May 24th, 2021, it was a normal day. Their base was called for a fire, and Tim and his smokejumping comrades went out to do the job they did so well. This jump was to be totally different. My son died but not in vain and not for nothing, He died doing a job he truly loved to do. As his mom, I am sad that I will not see or hear my son again. But I am so very proud of the man who was doing a job he loved. Tim David Hart, you will always be with me, in my heart and in my thoughts, as well as in the hearts and thoughts of family and friends and very brave and loved wildland firefighters and jumpers. You will never be gone because you live in all of us who loved and know you. Thank you for your service, Tim, you are a true hero.“
Life friend Matt Werner said: “It is true… he was a firefighter, a smokejumper, madly in love with Michelle and the South Fork (in that order)…. Perpetually in motion, doing what he loved.”
Finally, Michelle, Tim’s incredible wife, challenged the stadium: “Enjoy silence, embrace mystery. Be the first to action, live at the tip of the spear. Do not let anyone alter or quiet your voice. This is how Tim lived.”
Tim has been celebrated, cheered, and sent off by his fellow smokejumpers over two weeks all of us will never forget, yet would trade for anything if we could only have him back. Fire season is here and many of us are back on the line, cracking chutes over God’s country (well, some God-forsaken places, too). For many smokejumpers of the younger cohort, Tim’s passing was the first major death they’ve experienced, and that it happened by jumping took away a lot of the sanctimonious veil of this high-speed lifestyle. I’m worried for many of them this upcoming offseason when the adrenaline and excitement of jumps and fires can’t dilute the necessary grief and processing we will all need.
I didn’t have the privilege of being Tim’s best friend or even his rookie bro (RB); the testimonials to his life given by these people are recorded on Tim’s celebration ceremony, along with his processional, at the Custer Gallatin NF Facebook page. These speeches are evidence of sacred and brotherly bond and I do not contend to hold better words to honor Tim.
However, Tim was a fellow smokejumper and a friend of mine. For some reason, the way the List worked out, I ended up jumping more fires with him than any other jumper out of West Yellowstone during my two years there. I was on the load with him when he finally got his dream home forest jump in fall 2019 on the Shoshone outside of Cody. Last summer I had a fantastic jump in the Wind Rivers with him. Many good chats with that guy around the campfire and sipping his homemade whiskey. For some reason, when a love of mine passed away last fall (she was also in fire), it was just Tim and a very sad version of myself at the base in West for a few weeks, so we had lots of barbecues and pondered this thing called life.
Tim Hart jumps the Wind River’s near Crowheart, WY.
I won’t give all my memories of Tim away. But another tragedy is that what I get to hold isn’t much beyond Tim’s “you go on now and get yourself right, always here for an ear if you need it.” Maybe if I’d called him once in the offseason, to talk about our elk hunts, new rye whiskeys, and interstellar phenomena. Too many maybes already, too soon.
I had jumped a fire in Nevada a week before Tim met Fate and as the situation developed, I knew there was one place on Earth I needed to be. It was all of a sudden very real when Tim arrived in Cody, WY, on the Sherpa, to be received by his jumpers and community. The procession event was very well done: there were engines and fire folk standing for Tim at every point of the day, even in Grand Junction, CO, when the Sherpa refueled. In Cody, West Yellowstone Smokejumpers were able to carry Tim from the Honor Guard aboard the Sherpa and bring him to the waiting hearse, a very moving experience for us all (the Honor Guard very rarely releases control of the person to any other personnel). Hundreds of ordinary folk lined the roads to the funeral home, paying respects to a man they barely knew.
Watching over Tim’s casket for the week before the funeral is the highest honor of my fire career. True to the character of the smokejumper program, Tim was never out of smokejumper sight or presence since his jump; he always had a jump partner. For line of duty deaths, the USFS provides a joint BLM/NPS/USFS Honor Guard to respect the fallen, nonstop, until internment. This fantastic group volunteers time from their normal jobs to honor fallen peers they’ve never met. These folks were blown away by the smokejumper resilience and dedication to staying with Tim, 24/7, for the week in El Paso and then the week in Cody. However, as fresh Honor Guard rotated through, I don’t think they were quite sure what to make of us jumpers: we never left, the mood alternated from somber to general smokejumper carousing with some increasingly finer rye whiskeys (his favorites), beers, strong coffee, and increasingly exaggerated smokejumper tales. We got too caffeinated in the morning to sit still in grief. Instead of soft, somber background music, we had folk music and bluegrass playing too loudly for a funeral home, as Tim would have liked. Tim loved playing his banjo and had many stories to add to the night as well.
Standing watch for Tim in the deepest hours of the night captivated us all in different ways. Long hours thinking about what it all means, our place in the world, against/with nature, among friends, and to our loves.
Tim’s wife, Michelle, is an unbelievably strong individual. She spent many hours with us and Tim (we gave her the room when she requested) and outperformed us all in practically navigating the logistics of the next several days. I personally learned a lot about life, love, and fine whiskeys from Tim, via Michelle, that week.
