Smokejumpers Start Training For Season

Forest Service smokejumpers are training as the 1995 fire season slowly begins to speed up.

The base is home to about 80 smokejumpers, eight of whom are new this year to jumping out of airplanes. The rookies are about to finish up a rigorous four-week training program, preparing them for the important task of catching and extinguishing small fires.

Rookies must have five or six years of firefighting experience to be a smokejumper candidate. Their fire experience is supplemented with classroom instruction on all aspects of fire suppression and behavior and simulation exercises.

The simulation exercises include jumping out of a mock airplane door high on a tower while attached to cables, which simulates leaping from the plane. They also are hoisted up in the air, attached by their parachute harness and taught how to lower themselves to the ground when they are caught in a tree. Another simulation apparatus is motorized cable to which they are attached by their parachute harness and brought down to the ground at an angle and at varying speeds to simulate the actual landing.

After 10 jumps and an overnight camp out, where they jump into a site, retrieve cargo dropped for them and wrap up their instruction, they are ready.

Each rookie is paired with an experienced jumper and goes on the fire list, ready for an assignment, on June 30.