Smokejumper

by Jason A. Ramos

  After baking in the sun all day, a hillside of Gambel oak or juniper can become saturated with invisible flammable gases called terpenes, just waiting for a spark to explode, a phenomenon called superheating.

  More things to consider: How much fuel is available (the fuel load), and how is it arranged? Are flammable materials spread out evenly or clumped together? Is there more on the ground or up in the canopy?

  Don’t forget underground: smoldering tree roots, buried logs, ash pits, and coals can lurk out of sight from one year to the next, even under snow. Mop-ups often involve “potato patching,” endless shallow digging with pulaskis for buried heat sources. Firefighters have to feel for heat with their bare hands.

  Ladder fuels carry fire from the ground up into the canopy, where it’s an order of magnitude harder to fight. Canopy fires sometime take off in a completely different direction from the ground fire that lit them.

  Subalpine fir is a bitch in this regard. The same features that make fir trees popular as Christmas trees—densely needled branches that reach almost to the ground—also make them perfect ladders for flames.

  Makes you wonder about people’s sanity when they used to decorate trees with lit candles around the holidays, doesn’t it?

  I WAS DOING MY best to stay levelheaded as I called the jumper on the radio.

  Jumpers don’t need to be micromanaged. He knew what he was doing.

  All I could do was take a breath and chill out.

  It was mid-July 2013, an early fire for the Okanogan. This was turning out to be a big lightning year for the Northwest. Before the snow started falling, over a quarter of a million strikes would be recorded, double the annual record and four times the average.

  Sometimes you get a load of guys you’ve worked with for years, and sometimes you get a load you’ve never worked with before. They’re all highly trained, but it can be challenging as the JIC if you aren’t familiar with each jumper’s strong points and hangups.

  This load was half and half. And it was shaping up to be a hard mission. We were on our own on the ground for the first few days, even though I had requested more resources and jumpers.

  On top of everything, I had such a bad cough I felt like I was going to break a rib. At one point I coughed so hard my nose bled. (Later I found out whooping cough had recently made a run through the Methow Valley.)

  More crew and supplies were due to come in at any time by helicopter. Earlier I had sent two jumpers to the helispot to manage the incoming support.

  The other four of us started working above the fire. I gave the other three their assignments—two sawyers, one lookout—then hiked a few hundred yards down the ridge. I found an open rocky area that would work as a command post: satphone reception, good visibility of the fire and jumpers, everything a JIC needs.

  I spread out my pack, satellite phone, solar charger, and assorted paperwork. There was some weather inbound—things were starting to kick up already—and with that kind of intel you want to have a heads-up. Our lookout had an excellent vantage point on the ridgeline. If necessary he could handle a large amount of the information and direction on the fire, especially if I got bogged down in radio communications.

  This ridge had already burned through once on this fire, but there was still plenty of fuel left up high in the trees.

  Sure enough, the wind started picking up late in the afternoon. Soon it was gusting over 30 mph. The fire surged, and it was time to head to safety. But where was the other jumper?

  It wasn’t more than a few seconds before his voice finally came over the radio, although it felt like longer. He had reached the safety zone.

  “Roger that,” I said, relieved.

  Then I felt heat pricking my face. The wind had grown so strong that it was now pushing the flames down the ridge toward me.

  It was now just a few yards away.

  DOWNHILL OF A FIRE is usually the best place to be. But not always.

  In general, flames tend to grow and speed up as they go uphill. Compared to flat ground, a fire will spread twice as fast on a 30 percent slope and four times as fast on a 55 percent slope. A downslope of about 15 percent gives the slowest spread; anything steeper and burning fuels falling and rolling downhill start to increase the speed again.

  Terrain can affect fire behavior as much as fuels. At least you know the topography isn’t going to change over the course of a fire season, a mission, or even an afternoon, which makes its effect easier to predict.

  Along with the steepness of a slope, it’s also important to consider the direction the slope is facing. In the Northern Hemisphere, slopes with southern exposure get more sun. Fuels tend to be lighter and drier—that is, more flammable—than on north-facing slopes. Once a fire gets going in a north slope’s denser fuels, though, it can be more difficult to put out.

  Put more than one slope together—say, in a canyon—and things get interesting fast. River gorges and other kinds of deep ravines can make fires do all kinds of strange things. They change airflow in unpredictable ways, transfer heat and flying embers from one slope to another, and create microclimates, small areas of unpredictable fire behavior.

  Narrow canyons, especially dead-end box canyons, can funnel winds like a chimney. Hot air rises up and flows out of the upper end and is replaced by more air pulled in at the bottom. If there’s a fire, this cycle can fan the flames and turn the whole thing into a giant blazing wind tunnel.

  Weather is the most fickle of the three main things that affect fire behavior. It’s the only one that can change completely in the time it takes to eat a hamburger.

  Wildland firefighters obsess over the weather more than your average meteorologist, and for good reason. For most people, the worst consequence of missing the daily weather report is getting a little damp on the way to work or having a less-than-perfect weekend at the beach.

  For a jumper, hotshot, or anyone else on a fire line, an accurate forecast can mean the difference between living and dying.

  Temperature and humidity are both important too; fires burn faster the hotter it is and often “lie down” at night when it’s cooler and more humid.

  But as I witnessed on the ridgetop, wind is the one feature you have to watch out for on an hourly or even minute-by-minute basis. Wind feeds fire with more oxygen and carries burning embers to light new spot fires. It preheats and dries out fuels, then pushes flames toward them.

  Since sun-warmed air rises, winds generally blow upslope during the day, peaking in the midafternoon and slowing or even reversing at night.

  Not always, though. As a teenager in Southern California, I had seen what the Santa Anas, bone-dry downhill winds up to 60 mph, could do to a daytime blaze. I’ve seen gusts blow down power lines and roll a giant culvert across open fields, real Wizard of Oz–type stuff.

  Thunderstorms are a mixed blessing. They can spark wildfires with lightning, fan them up with wind, and put them out with rain.

  As storm cells grow and mature, they often create updrafts and downdrafts of 50 mph or more that can act like bellows on a fire.

  Sometimes a storm cell just collapses and dumps rain. Other times, if a fire is large enough, it can create its own weather. Anvil-topped clouds rise into the stratosphere. These can act just like normal storm cells, complete with wind and lightning and precipitation.

  At ground level, if conditions are right, the wind and heat and flames can start to reinforce one another in a hellish feedback loop called a firestorm.

  In a firestorm, nothing is safe: sand turns to glass, metal runs like water, wood and human beings vanish into ash. Blazing tornadoes of flames suck up smoke and debris.

  “Fire devils” are actually fairly common in intense wildfires. The smallest ones are only a few feet across with winds of a few dozen miles per hour. Large ones go down in history alongside names like Dresden and Hiroshima. The bombing of Hamburg during World War II created a thousand-foot-high fire tornado with 150 mph winds that tossed people into the air like so man
y leaves.

  Natural firestorms can be just as bad. In the summer of 1871, the Upper Midwest was baked by drought and hot weather. Cold fronts are notorious for bringing sudden shifts in weather, and on October 8 one pushed across most of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. The winds it brought fanned countless small fires into one massive firestorm called the Peshtigo Fire.

  Survivors described a wall of flame a mile high and five miles wide that traveled faster than a speeding locomotive. Winds tossed train cars and houses through the air. People leaped into rivers and lakes to escape and drowned or died of hypothermia instead. Desperate parents cut their own children’s throats instead of letting the flames take them.

  In the end, 1.2 million acres burned and between fifteen hundred and twenty-five hundred people died. The numbers are fuzzy because so many town records were destroyed and so many bodies were burned beyond recognition or simply vaporized. The Peshtigo Fire is still the deadliest fire in U.S. history.

  So why does hardly anyone know about it today? Probably because of a more famous fire that happened on the same day. About 250 miles south, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed a good chunk of the city’s downtown and killed about three hundred people.

  Fuels, terrain, and weather interact in countless ways when it comes to fire. Mountains create thunderclouds. Drought makes fuels more flammable. Steep slopes have the same effect as high winds. Damp fuels offset high temperatures. And so on.

  Nothing illustrates how the complex equation can turn deadly better than the Storm King fire in the summer of 1994.

  PHOTO SECTION

  The aftermath of the “Big Blowup”—Coeur d’Alene National Forest (Idaho), August 1910. This historic fire burned three million acres, took eighty-five lives, and forever changed America’s attitude to forest fires—and wildland firefighting. USFS

  Fighting fire in the early days. Then as now, they were lucky if they had a water source nearby. USFS

  On the fire line, working the fire’s edge. The goal was the same back then: take the fuel away from the fire, leaving it nothing to consume. KD Swann

  Fred Patten, Recreation Guard at Meriwether Campground, inspects the remains of a flashlight used in the Mann Gulch fire of 1949. The cross next to him marks the spot where Leonard J. Piper, a smokejumper, lost his life in the fire. 1969, Helena National Forest. Philip G. Schlamp

  Johnson Flying Service with jumpers preparing for a mission. Phil Stanley

  Pioneer smokejumper Francis Lufkin in 1939. This was Lufkin’s first plane ride and first jump, in the Chelan (now Okanogan-Wenatchee) National Forest, Washington. HC King

  Smokejumper soon after leaving the plane with the pilot parachute completely distended and the thirty-five-foot canopy unfolding. June 1940, Lolo National Forest, Montana. K.D. Swann

  Johnson checking Lufkin’s jumpsuit. Today we use a remarkably similar jumpsuit, with careful attention to detail, high-end textiles, and padding. These guys were way ahead of their time. USFS

  Entrance sign at the “Okanogan aerial project,” now known as North Cascades Smokejumper Base. Okanogan National Forest, Washington, July 1957. Donald B. Stickney

  Lufkin holding one of the tree branches broken off by Chet Derry, who mistook a moss-covered larch for a pine tree. His parachute collapsed but opened again and set him on the ground easily.

  Some of the protective gear we still wear today. Virgil “Bus” Derry in a jumpsuit that then included a back brace and leggings. In front of Stinson Reliant SR-10, 1939, Intercity Airport, Winthrop, Washington. H.C. King

  Ground training for smokejumpers. Payette National Forest, Idaho, July 10, 1952. Lowell J. Farmer

  Smokejumping squadleader Bill Carver demonstrating to trainees the inverted “V” trough, for strengthening ankles. Lolo National Forest, 1952. WE Steuerwald

  Men on the conditioning obstacle course with stockades (the “torture rack”), performing leg, back, and abdominal exercises. Lolo National Forest, 1952. WE Steuerwald

  The let-down simulator. This unit teaches trainees how to safely rappel out of a tree or any other object they’ve managed to land in. You can see the NCSB loft in the background, still the same building that we use today. USFS

  New trainees practicing on the “mock-uprisers” designed to teach the “planing” maneuver and strengthen arm and shoulder muscles, 1952, Lolo National Forest. WE Steuerwald

  Group of jumpers with Frank Derry in the center, about to take off in a Ford Trimotor plane at Missoula Airport, Missoula, Montana, for practice jumps with static line. KD Swann

  Early rations and gear. KD Swann

  The parachute loft, where we make and repair all our gear. This is the heart of the operation. Phil Stanley

  Smokejumpers become very proficient with sewing machines. Phil Stanley

  Fred Brauer and Jack Nash in the assembly room at the smokejumpers loft. Missoula, Montana, 1951. WE Steuerwald

  Smokejumper equipment on display at the Society of American Foresters meeting, Farmington Flats, Utah, 1946. Paul S. Bieler

  Outside the NCSB loft, all geared up and ready to go. USFS

  Jump partners fully geared up with all the tools needed for fire suppression, including pulaski and crosscut saw, circa 1945. Phil Stanley

  Double stick: two jumpers in the door getting ready to head to work. Note the spotter on the floor next to the door. Lolo National Forest. Maurice Vogel

  Smokejumpers parachuting into Glacier National Park, Montana. Martin Onishuk

  Smokejumpers descending. USFS

  Radioing in after landing. Phil Stanley

  Parachute jumper Dick Tuttle near the top of a one-hundred-foot lodge pole pine snag, waiting for assistance from then–Forest Guard Francis Lufkin. David P. Goodwin

  Some of the early parachutes were made out of silk. In the rear you can see the Derry brothers’ steering slots that made the Derry slotted parachute more controllable for tight jump spots. USFS

  My “office view” from the ridgeline fire in the Okanogan/Wenatchee National Forest, North Cascades. To a jumper, these mountains are always beautiful—and sometimes pure hell, too.

  If these wings could talk. This impressive artwork watches over the daily operations at NCSB. It is made out of two pulaskis and dozens of jumpers’ gloves collected throughout the years.

  Examining a reserve parachute in the NCSB loft. As a jumper you’re always checking and re-checking your gear to make sure everything is in top condition and ready to go.

  Packed chutes ready for service in the NCSB loft, with retired parachute harnesses hanging above. There are years of history on these walls.

  Jump 9 on standby at NCSB with a Redmond jump ship in the background. The smoke column in the distance is from one of the lightning-sparked fires that would eventually join with others and grow into the Carlton Complex of 2014.

  Some of the specialized gear I jump with. The gear each jumper carries can vary depending on training and expertise.

  Suited up at sunset at NCSB, checking out some new gear for the next mission.

  A nighttime lightning strike: smokejumpers have a saying, “We jump at dawn,” that pertains to moments like this.

  Jumpers away! The Casa 212 drops a load of jumpers over the Methow Valley near NCSB. Rick Stewart

  That’s me coming in on final approach to the jump spot. Rick Stewart

  We work to stay proficient, typically jumping every seven to fourteen days depending on fire activity. Rick Stewart

  Down safe and ready to work. Our jumpsuit is padded from head to toe and can sometimes weigh more than seventy-five pounds with gear. Rick Stewart

  Bring it in, hump it out. Pack-outs are one of the hardest parts of jumping. This was an interesting one at Crater Lake, Oregon—turned out to be 154.8 pounds.

  Fire 242: this 2013 ridgeline fire in the North Cascades is starting to wake up and make a push down canyon.

  A 2012 late season fire in Washington. We pulled out the next day when it grew too large. Mother Nature put this one
out.

  In the middle of a six-day mission on steep and rugged terrain near Leavenworth, Washington. On this one I used high-end solar gear so we didn’t have to depend on helicopter support for batteries.

  The view from a plane coming on station over an established fire. Large fires can create their own weather, including rain, hail, high winds, and lightning. Doug Houston

  A lightning-caused fire in Washington State in late September 2012. This was taken during our morning briefing on a road below, where I was going through the day’s work assignments as task force leader trainee.

  My first experience with the sheer power of a large fire: the view from the roof of our house in Wildomar, California, in 1987.

  The Wildomar fire was practically in my backyard. Southern California is famous for its extreme fire behavior.

  Tanker dropping fire retardant in Washington State. Bill Moody

  Sometimes my house travels with me. Here on a taskforce assignment in Washington, the Sportsmobile makes a great response and command vehicle—not to mention a home.

  One of the reasons we do what we do: protecting natural resources like this giant cedar in Washington State.

  Ceviche time in Baja California. Keeping in shape throughout the year is key, so in the off-season I often freedive up to fours hours a day, eat healthy, and take plenty of naps.