This spring at a U.S. Forest Service base in Redding, smokejumper cadets leaped from a training tower and whizzed down a zip line as instructors shouted encouragement.
Rookies who pass the six weeks of grueling physical and mental trials will get the chance to jump out of an airplane, hike miles through the backcountry and fight fire in remote forests this summer.
The job attracts a certain type of person.
Brandon Swezey joined the program last year. He said he has wanted to become a smokejumper since learning about the job on his first day as a fire engine crew member.
“It just seemed like the coolest job there was,” he said. “The lure of it, the tradition.”
He was right — for him, it is the coolest job ever. He still remembers his first jump with a smile.
“It makes this loud whoosh sound, and it kind of hits you,” Swezey said. “Out you go and next thing you know, you're on the ground and you got a big adrenaline dump.”
Jumping out of airplanes is only one part of the job. Swezey quickly learned that smokejumpers also must be skilled at climbing up and down trees.
He landed in a tree during one early jump. He wasn't injured, luckily, and used his training to rappel down.
Smokejumpers aren't the only things that get caught in trees. Planes drop supplies during an operation, but the cargo boxes regularly end up in the forest canopy. Smokejumpers must climb the trees to retrieve them.
Smokejumpers become such skilled arborists they are often called to remove tree limbs and other hazards at campsites during the winter.
Swezey was also surprised he would need to learn how to sew.
Inside what smokejumpers call "the loft," assistant operations manager Matthew West hunches over a sewing machine. Here, smokejumpers use rows of machines to sew much of their own jumpsuits and repair gear worn or damaged during fire assignments.
West said there are a few reasons for manufacturing their own gear.
“It’s cost-effective,” West said. ”It’s pretty unique. There's nobody else that parachutes into wildfire.”
He said that it takes longer to become skilled at manufacturing gear than it does to learn how to jump out of a plane.
West, a smokejumper for 13 years, is coming up on his 300th jump. He said one of the biggest changes he has seen is the transition from a round canopy, designed for paratroopers, to the more maneuverable ram-air parachute seen in the sports world.
“We were given 10 years to complete that,” West said. “It was pretty challenging to get everyone through it.”
Smokejumping began in 1940, and the Redding base opened in 1957. While technology has changed, the philosophy of smokejumping has pretty much stayed the same.
“Our policy in our forest is that when there's a fire that breaks out, you go get it,” said Bob Doucette, public affairs officer with the Forest Service.
He said only overly dangerous conditions will keep smokejumpers from deploying. About 30 smokejumpers have lost their lives since the program’s founding.
“You're not going to have like a massive fire and then send people headlong right into it,” Doucette said. “You got to be safe about how you attack it.”
Out on the runway, a Short C-23 Sherpa sits packed and ready for the first alarm of fire season. Smokejumpers are trained to put on their jumpsuit in under two minutes after hearing that siren. The support crew drops enough supplies for the smokejumpers to be self-sufficient for 72 hours. But smokejumpers can fight fires for weeks with resupply runs.
Last year, Redding smokejumpers parachuted into 59 fires across the region.
West said the hardest part of the job is not jumping out of planes or firefighting. It’s the weeks away from family and loved ones that can take the biggest toll.
“Once fires start happening, you're going to be spending a very limited amount of days, or time at all, at home with your family,” West said. ”That's the most challenging part for me.”
Swezey said the job isn’t for everyone. Only half of his class made it through training.
To become a smokejumper, he said, is a lot like jumping from a plane.
“You kind of got to be all in,” he said.
