![]() The jumper caught it, and as he walked off the helispot, the chopper flew away. He looked up and signalled to the pilot, who nodded and then tossed something out of the window. It hovered over the helisopt for a moment, maybe 20 or 30 feet off the deck, and a jumper casually sauntered out till it seemed like he was right under the belly of the chopper. While I was refilling my bag, a helicopter was on approach, so I stuck around to watch it come in. Later that morning, I was refilling a bladder bag near a helispot the jumpers had constructed to ferry cargo in and out. It was quite apparent that these guys and gals had their own way of doing things and they did it with style and swagger. And then there was the line gear – they weren’t wearing any! And of course no one had their gloves on either. Just enough to create a critical separation between the green and the black. The check line they put in was little more than a few licks with a pulaski. It looked as if they had just raced along the fire’s edge, and cut ten or fifteen foot sections to cut off fingers where the fire was advancing more quickly. How had these guys been able to wrap up a 200 acre fire? It amazed me how effective they could be with so few people.Īs we went out to secure the line they had cut it, I also couldn’t believe how differently their approach to line cutting was to ours (and by ours I mean a Type 2 crew). When we arrived, I couldn’t believe that there couldn’t have been more than seven or eight of them. The first fire that I was on where I crossed paths with smokejumpers was in Western Colorado, and the jumpers had fought the fire for 24 straight hours, and had done a great job of keeping it under 200 acres. While hotshot crews certainly do their fair share of initial attack, it is not their primary mission specialty. Once the hotshot crews arrive, they will often times start by reinforcing the control lines cut by the smokejumpers. By keeping the fire at bay, they are able to buy time for extended attack resources to arrive on scene, like hotshot crews. The work that they do in the first 24 or 36 hours can determine whether a fire is contained at 10 acres or blows out to 10,000. They would rather get the fire wrangled with chicken scratch line, versus cutting bomber line around just a quarter of it. Smokejumpers are supposed to ring a fire as quickly as possible, which oftentimes meaning putting the smallest amount of line in that will hold. Hotshots love to take snipes at smokejumper line as often times being just a grade above a game trail, but it is not the smokejumpers job to build a fireline that will withstand a fiery Armageddon. Smokejumpers have a notorious reputation for doing the bare minimum when it comes to fireline construction. Outfitted in a suit that looks a bit like an EOD technician wearing a football helmet, these guys and gals are some of the toughest, most experienced firefighters in the wildland community.Īs an initial attack resource, their mission is get to a fire as quickly as possible and keep it from getting any bigger. Smokejumpers are an initial attack resource whose primary method for arriving on scene is a bit more dramatic than most: they parachute in.
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