City of Redding Podcast
City of Redding Podcast
USFS Smokejumpers: Jumping From Airplanes Into Wildfires
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What does it take to jump out of an airplane into a remote wildfire? In this episode, we sit down with U.S. Forest Service Smokejumper Base Manager Mitch Hokanson to discuss the highly trained firefighters who parachute into some of the toughest terrain imaginable, often reaching fires before they become major incidents.
We learn about the intense training required to earn the title, and why having a smokejumper base in Redding is so important for protecting the North State and communities across the West. Along the way, we hear incredible stories from the field, surprising facts about the job, and what happens from the moment a fire is reported to the moment firefighters hit the ground.
If you’ve ever wondered what smokejumpers actually do—or why Redding plays such a critical role in wildfire response—this is an episode you won’t want to miss.
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And I'm Stephen Pitts. They picture fire engines, helicopters, maybe crews taken to the woods, but there's another team, one of the most elite and unique firefighting resources in the country that literally jumps out of airplanes into remote wildfires. And one of their bases is right here in Reading.
SPEAKER_03Today we're talking with U.S. Forest Service smoke jumper-based manager Mitt Hoginson about the highly trained firefighters who parachute into some of the toughest terrain imaginable, often reaching fires before they have a chance to become major incidents.
SPEAKER_01And while a lot of people have heard the term smoke jumper, most probably don't realize how important this program is to protecting the North State, or why Reading plays such a critical role in wildfire response across the Western United States.
SPEAKER_00Uh, work for the U.S. Forest Service. I've been a smoke jumper since 2000. We call that your rookie year, the year that you start. You're a rookie. And then your second year, you get a fire jump, you become a smoky. So this is my 27th year, and probably one of the most exciting jobs a person could have. And I don't foresee myself doing anything else. You have to retire at 57, you're forced out. And as long as my body holds up, I'll probably go till 57.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Mitch. We're excited to have you on the episode today. We've been really pining to learn more about the smoke jumpers for quite a long time. And so we're quite looking forward to this conversation today. I mean, 27 fire seasons seems like a ton, especially in your world. And I'm sure we'll get into what exactly that means and what that looks like and how physically and mentally demanded it is. So maybe we could just start with that. For those folks who may not be aware, what exactly is a smoke jumper? I think lots of us have heard the term, but can you just go into a little bit of what exactly a smoke jumper is and what they do?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so smoke jumpers are basically parachute into forest fires. And a lot of people think it's crazy, but the training that we have is excellent. And people would be surprised on how soft we can land. So typically our bread and butter is a lightning storm and lots of starts. And those fires that engines can't get to very fast or crews walk to them very fast, rugged country, those are the fires that we excel at. Those remote fires, hard to get to. We get in there quickly. We have lots of options for jump spots. We use brush fields a lot where helicopters may not be able to land because the brush or trees are too high. And we can land on ridgetops. Obviously, we love meadows.
SPEAKER_03I'm probably jumping ahead, Mitch, but this is where my brain immediately goes, where I'm like, okay, yes, I feel like that's insane to jump into a fire. But then how do you get out? I guess we're gonna get into a lot of this stuff. I have so many questions. But when a lightning strike hits and the fire's starting, in my brain, I'm thinking, like, hey, in the middle of nowhere in remote areas, this fire can get out of hand really, really quickly. You're parachuting into this situation. What does that assessment look like? Is there ever a situation where this fire is just so big that how do you get out of that situation?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's I would say a lot of our times, the fires that we go to are in the smoldering phase. They're just getting started. We're getting to them early. Sometimes there's rain with them, and sometimes there's not. So when there's rain with them, we can be more aggressive and jump. Sometimes it's safer to jump right next to it. Sometimes there may be no oxygen and we have to jump farther away. So we'll get over the fire and we'll make some low passes over it and get some good situational awareness of where we think the fire is going to go, looking at the winds. And so when we deploy our jumpers, we're not gonna put them out at the head of the fire. So the head of the fire is the main concentration of heat, usually the direction that the wind's pushing it. And we'll make sure that we're putting our folks in the safe spot. We call it at the heel, we'll usually try and put them, but sometimes it's a couple miles away, and we'll know that the best way to access that fire is from a certain direction. And if there's any concerns, we will call an air attack, which is somebody who has eyes in the sky, and they'll fly over and just monitor our access till we get to the fire and get some boots on the ground and actually can start creating an anchor point. And an anchor point is basically we'll go to the area that's the coolest and we'll start digging our hand line there. They call it anchor, flanker, and and spank basically. So we start our hand line usually at the coldest section of the fire, and we'll just build hand line around the fire and hopefully get around it before it spots across the lines and gets into trees. When the jumpers hit the ground, our cargo comes in after us, and it comes out in boxes. And in those boxes, we have chainsaws, tools, water, sleeping bags. We have enough supplies to last for three days. So, unlike a lot of other assets that fight fire, where they have the ability to be resupplied by vehicle or hike it in, we're so remote sometimes that we just need to be self-sustained for three days.
SPEAKER_01And Mitch, you talked about getting in there and working on those lines and really fighting that fire from behind the scenes a little bit. With regard to smoke jumpers, why parachute? Why is parachuting into the fire area and around the fire area, why is that the best option versus engines or helicopters or airplanes?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, a lot of times those fires, everyone always asks, how big was the fire when it started? Well, it's usually just a spark. And the quicker you can get to it, say it takes someone two hours to drive and then hike into this fire. We could be probably in a hundred mile radius within 30 minutes, deploy our jumpers and be able to catch that fire at a tenth of an acre. And time matters because within that hour, it could double or triple in size and say two hours. It could be quadruple, be ten acres. Then you're looking at more resources. You're ordering air tankers and helicopters, you're ordering crews, engines. The quicker you can get to that fire, and a lot of times it could be you just need to bet you boot around it before it gets into a jackpot of fuels. And the jackpot of fuels could be something like a dead tree or some dry brush that torches out and throws embers and the winds spread it rapidly. We get there quick, and we can get to those areas before it gets to the jackpots and spreads rapidly.
SPEAKER_03And Mitch, when you say start your hand line, I'm also seeing that as in my brain's going, if you're in a remote area, I would imagine it's pretty overgrown, pretty full of brush, trees, limbs. What does that actually look like to have to cut a hand line out in these remote areas?
SPEAKER_00It's kind of like a puzzle. You got somebody with a chainsaw, you got somebody with a Pulaski, which is we don't know what a Pulaski is, it's got a hoe end and an axe in. And then we have, we call it a rhino. It's a shovel, and we cut it off and then weld it so it's at a 90-degree angle. So basically, it's like a big hoe in the shape of a shovel. A lot of our fires are average. We only put five people on a fire, and we're usually out there for about five days. So those five people will grab their tool and they will go to the section of the line that's usually the hottest to put that out first. And they'll use chainsaws to cut the brush out. And then the guys with the Pulaskies and the rhinos will come in behind them and scrape away all the leaves and ground litter that will catch on fire. And they dig it down to the dirt. And if conditions are right, that fire is just going to burn itself to the dirt and then put itself out.
SPEAKER_01Mitch, during fire season, the jumpers are sitting at the base, in this case at the Redding Airport base, waiting for that call. And when that fire starts, like you said, when that spark starts, folks identify whether that fire warrants jumpers to be on it. And then how quickly from the time that you guys get that call, are you on that airplane heading towards that fire?
SPEAKER_00So we tell everybody three-minute suit up. So we've got racks that hang our gear, like a structure fire probably would. We have to put on our Kevlar jumpsuit, which is puncture resistant, fireproof. We have shin guards. So we'll get the call. We'll put on our shin guards first. Then we'll put on our jump jacket, which is the Kevlar jacket, and it's got a big collar to protect our neck. Then we put on our pants that go over our fire clothing, and then we put on our harness. And one parachute, our main parachute, is already attached to that harness. We put that harness on, and then we attach our reserve parachute to our chest, and then we'll make all the little connections. We'll grab our jump helmet and we'll grab our line gear and we'll head out to the airplane. And we have a three-minute time limit on that. And then the guys need to get a check before they get on the airplane. We call it a buddy check to make sure that everyone put their stuff on correctly and that they've hooked all of their parachutes correctly. And within 15 minutes is our goal to be wheels up and off the ground.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so Mitch, let me just clarify. So you have three minutes to get ready to spend five days in the remote wilderness fighting fires. Is that about some of that up?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And it's funny, every year, my first fire jump, you get to the ground and you open up your pack and you realize I forgot my toilet paper or I forgot a toothbrush. And by the second fire, you've got all your stuff dialed in. We have to carry like a jacket, a sweatshirt, some guys have. I just use a rain fly, which is just a tarp that I tie up to keep the rain off me. And some people put steaks in their pockets or sausages. People have frying pans in their leg pockets to cook our food because we're living off what we're carrying or what's in our food box for up to these until we get resupplied. And there's times when you forget your sweatshirt and you just got to keep the fire going all night.
SPEAKER_01So talking about loading up gear and equipment and things like that, during this process, it's a very dangerous job in general. Is that time from jumping out of the airplane to landing in heavy brush and trees and foliage and things like that? Is that arguably the most dangerous time for the smoke jumpers to find that clearing? And I'm assuming there are injuries that happen upon landing and things of that nature.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would assume so. Anything could happen. Parachuting. Like I'll look out at the plane sometimes and I'll be like, wow, this is crazy. And then you jump out and you make it to the ground and you land real soft. You're like, wow, that wasn't so bad. But you look at the surrounding terrain, and you just look at you're jumping a ridgetop and you're looking at valleys a couple thousand feet below, and you're like, wow, if I don't make this spot, I'm gonna drift down into that valley. But it's just ultra concentration on flying your parachute into the spot that you need to land in. And I'm really impressed with how our guys fly our parachutes, and I think the public would be very impressed with the spots that we're landing these parachutes in. And you'll see guys just stack their parachutes on top of each other. Usually when there's a big jump spot, people will be scattered, but when it's a really small jump spot, it's impressive how accurate people are just stacking their canopies on top of each other.
SPEAKER_03Wow, that is very impressive. Mitch, I've been skydiving once. It was exhilarating and thrilling, but I don't know that I'm in a rush to do it again. How high are you when you're dropping out of the airplane? Like how close to the ground are you? My memory of it's not great because it happened so fast my body was like in super adrenaline mode. But how much time do you have between jumping out of the plane and landing?
SPEAKER_00It's about a minute. So let me run you through what a scenario would look like. So we'll suit up, get in the airplane, we'll fly out to the fire, and we'll do a low pass. So we're flying probably 300 feet above the ground, and we will take a look at the area that we want to jump. We'll look for hazards like we'll look for fences, we'll look for dead and down logs, we'll look for rocks, anything that when we hit the ground, we might run into and be able to avoid, keep that in memory. And then we'll take a look at the fire, we'll fly over it and look at the size of it, look at the activity, and we will talk about how many people we'll need to catch that fire and to put it out. Once we do that low task, we'll go up to 1,500 feet and we'll throw our paper streamers. And our streamers fall at about the same descent rate as a smoke jumper would under a parachute, and that determines the release point. So on a really windy day, you'll throw those streamers out. We also time them to make sure that there's no up air or down air. And if there is, we can adjust for it, but it's good for us to know that. So we'll throw an initial set of streamers. It's 12 feet long, they're crate paper, they're about six inches wide, they have a little bit of sand in them, and they're pretty cool. So we can watch them drift, see what the wind are doing. And then when those land, the spotter and the pilot will communicate on where they want to release the check set. Basically, that's gonna be the point where the spotter, who is a smoke jumper, and they're slapping us on the shoulder when it's time for us to jump, and the aircraft just flies in a circle over the jump spot, and they'll release a certain number of jumpers we can drop one guy at a time. If it's a really small spot and they don't need to compete with anyone else to land in that spot. Typically, we jump two at a time. So we'll fly that circle, drop two guys at a time, and we'll wait for them to hit the ground, and then they'll throw out the next two until this determined amount of people are on the ground. So those streamers are at 1,500 feet, and once they get a good release point, the plane will climb to 3,000 feet, and then the jumpers are attaching all their stuff that they took off to put on their seat belts and stuff, which is basically your gloves, your helmet, and then our firefighting pack, which is attached at our waist, and it hangs about at knee level. So from your waist down to your knee level is we call it line gear, and that becomes your backpack when you hit the ground. So they'll put their gloves, helmet, PG bag on, fire line gear, and the spotter will have them hook up their parachutes to a cable in the aircraft. And when they hit 3,000 feet, the spotter will be looking out the door, he'll look at where their jump spot is, and he'll find their release point, which is upwind of the spot. And he'll tell them to get in the door, they'll get in the door, they sit down, they jump out of the side door of the chaircraft in the back. And when they get over the release point, he'll slap the first jumper, they'll jump out, the next guy in line will jump down into the door and he'll slap them and out they go. So when you jump out of the aircraft, we have a drove parachute. It's smaller, it's like two feet in diameter, and it stabilizes your body. It opens automatically, and we do a five-second jump count, and then we pull our ripcord, and that drove parachute pulls our main canopy out of the container on our back. It's a square parachute, and we do control checks to make sure that it's functioning correctly. We'll do a left turn, a right turn, and then we'll do a braking action to make sure it'll turn left and right, and then it'll break itself. We'll also be looking for our jump partner to make sure we have appropriate spacing. And then the first jumper will do what we call riser turns or bond turns, and they'll grab one of their risers and they'll pull it down and they'll put you into a hard spin for about two to three full 360s, and that separates them vertically, the first jumper and the second jumper from each other, so that they don't land at the same time. The first jumper will probably be down probably 300 feet from the other jumper, and then they'll just fly into the jump spot, and it takes about a minute to hit the ground.
SPEAKER_01Wow. So it really is a precision operation, which makes sense. I'm curious, Mitch, maybe we can talk a bit about the folks that become jumpers, yourself and others. It seems like it's a very specific skill set that you learn. I'm sure you have to have courage and be a firefighter at the same time. So, what does someone have to do to be considered for smoke jumper training to begin with?
SPEAKER_00Technically, you just need one year of fire experience, but most of our folks have three to five, I would say. And most of our folks, including myself, have come from a hotshot crew. And a hotshot crew, if you're not familiar with them, they're like the workhorses of the fire. They're they do all the technical burnouts, they hike a lot, they're well organized. And so we fool our candidates usually from those crews because they get a lot of fire experience, they see a lot of the country, they fight in all kinds of environments. And if you can make it through a season or two on a hotshot crew, we know what it takes for somebody to make it in the smoke jumper organization. And then we're also checking references with their previous supervisors on those watch crews on how they handled themselves on the crew. And then physical conditioning is also a big part of it. You have to pass the mile and a half in under 11 minutes, 25 push-ups, 45 sit-ups, and seven pull-ups. And then we have an 85-pound pack over rough terrain that those people need to be able to do.
SPEAKER_03And Mitch, what about the training to do the jump from the airplane itself? Do you pack your own chutes? What does that piece of the training look like to prepare to do that over and over and over over the course of a fire season?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So let me talk about Ricky training. When you get hired as your first year, you're a Ricky. And the first week is learning the equipment and how to tree climb. So most people have never tree climbed before, and most people have never parachuted before. So your first week, you go and we do a lot of tree climbing and a lot of physical fitness. And then the second week, they go to the jump towers, which we have our own facility here with jump towers, where they practice their, they do a full week of this. They jump out of the towers on a zipline, and then they run back up to the tower and exit again. And they're practicing their aircraft exits, and they're also practicing malfunction procedures. So if there's some sort of malfunction, they need to know which handles to pull. And so there'll be an instructor on the ground that will give them a scenario on a PA system. And they'll have to pull the appropriate handles. They'll also do timber letdowns. So they will do repels out of the tower. So we have 150 foot of rope in our leg pocket if we get hung up in a tree. And they'll do reps of that, lowering themselves from the tower. They'll also do parachute landing falls, PLFs, and they'll practice absorbing the shock of the landing fall over and over and over. So that's pretty much the second week. Still learning classroom stuff on how to fly a parachute, how you're Parachute works, how to do emergency procedures if your parachute doesn't open or how to malfunction. And then their third week, they'll start jumping, which is pretty impressive. People that have no parachuting experience, they're jumping out of the aircraft on their third week, and they're doing it solo. They're not doing it with an instructor or anything. And it'll be a big open ranch, 30 to 100 acres, really open. And they'll have a radio on, and the instructors on the ground can walk them through flying their parachute for their first couple jumps. So tell them to turn right, turn left, and they get them fairly close to we put a panel out on the ground kind of as a target reference point for them to land near. And if they're within 100 yards of that's pretty good on their first jump. And then for the next following like four weeks, they're gonna get ideally 25 jumps, is the goal in those four weeks. And as they get better and learn how to fly their parachutes better, we give them different scenarios. So we start dropping them on ridgetops, dropping them in brush, dropping them on side hills, dropping them in the spots that are surrounded by timber. And then after they finish that six weeks, then they pull their name out of a hat and they get inserted with the rest of the old guys, guys who have been jumping for years. Those rookies will get spread out amongst the crew on a jump list. And then for returning jumpers, every yeah we have to jump out of the towers, we have to pass the physical fitness test, the pack test, and we will do about five jumps to be recertified for that year. So we'll do a really easy jump, big open area, knock the cobwebs off, and then we'll do a high wind jump where we're getting 10 to 15 mile an hour winds. We'll do a side hill, and we'll do a couple tight, more realistic jumps into something like that. And we rig our own parachutes. So everyone gets certified to rig. You have to rig 19 parachutes. Each one gets broken down by an instructor. And if there's anything wrong with it, you have to rig that one over. And then when you rig your 20th chute, you jump that one. And then after that, you can rig for the shelf.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Okay. And Mitch, within this rookie class, uh, on a given year, how many rookies are going through this rookie training? What's the attrition rate during the training? And for those who maybe decide that this isn't quite the career for them, what is that piece that weeds most of them out? Is it the physical training? Is it the mental piece of it?
SPEAKER_00So, for example, this year we started with 12. We're down to eight. Usually the first couple days, people don't realize how rigorous the training is, both physically and mentally, and they don't want to do it anymore. So that's one thing. The malfunction procedures and aircraft exits are another one that gets people. You kind of get three strikes and then you're out tree climbing. A lot of people don't like heights, and you don't really realize it until you start climbing a tree, and that gets some people. So those are the kind of the main ones.
SPEAKER_03But you rant through the whole thing of getting into the plane, getting prepared, jumping the plane, what it looks like to shoot down into the area, then you're taking care of the fire in the area. Once that's over, given that you are in some remote terrain, would do you radio out or do you hike yourself back out? How do you get out of whatever remote area you're in once the fire is contained, or you've done all that you can do and it's time for other crews to move in?
SPEAKER_00We do have radios and we communicate with the dispatch center wherever we're working, and we come up with a plan. We can hike out. So we'll hike cross country, or if we're lucky enough, we jump on a trail and we'll hike out to the nearest road and we'll arrange someone to pick us up. The other option is if we're in there really deep and it's going to take us forever and wear ourselves out carrying out all our gear, we can have our stuff long length out. So a helicopter comes out with a hundred-foot cable and a hook on it. We throw all of our heavy stuff into a net, they pick it up and they fly it to an airport, and then we'll hike out and someone will pick us up at a road. Or if there's an area for a helicopter to land and they really need a spec for another mission, they'll land the helicopter, we'll load our stuff into that and then fly out to the nearest airport. And then some drivers will come pick us up. And occasionally there's packed strings of mules that the Force Service has. So if it's smoky, they can't fly aircraft, and we're really deep, then they can bring in a packed string of mules and load up our gear and we'll just hike out behind them. Those are the most common options.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Mitch, I just I cannot imagine flying in this is just so impressive to me. Flying into a fire, fighting a fire for three to five days, whatever that looks like, and then packing yourself back out. What does it feel like at the end of that when you get when you finally get back out? Are you just like for a good good sleep and a good meal?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. A hamburger is the best thing when you come off a fire like that. Because you've been eating top ramen and MREs for three to five days, and you get out and you usually tell the driver the closest hamburger spot with some greasy fries is the best thing. We call it the demo burger.
SPEAKER_02I can't even imagine what that must taste like after.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and we don't shower, obviously, but if there's a creek or a lake nearby, we'll jump in and clean ourselves off. Poison oaks really bad here. So yeah. Any option we can to clean your socks. I mean, your socks just get beat down. A lot of people carry an extra pair, but a lot of people wait to use that pair for the hike out. So they have a nice fresh set of wool socks that are nice and soft for the hike out. So you might be out there for three to five days on the same pair of socks and then you switch them out when you do the high towel.
SPEAKER_01And Mitch, I'm just trying to think of the team itself. What's the ratio gender-wise? Are there women who become smoke jumpers as well? And if so, how common is that?
SPEAKER_00It's not that common. We have one, but she had a child last year. So we don't have any females right now. There's other smoke jumper bases that have up to five, I think. But we have females and they're tough as nails. They're awesome. They're just one of the bros, is what we call them.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. So much speaking of bases themselves, I know there's not that many smoke jumper bases throughout the U.S. Obviously, we have one here in Reading. Why here? How did Reading become uh a spot for a smoke jumper base and why is that important for our community?
SPEAKER_00A lot of people think the smoke jumpers are everywhere, but Reading is the only base in California. And it was started in 1957. The base before that was in Cave Junction, Oregon, which is just across the border in Oregon. And I don't know exactly the history, but I think they were doing a lot of work in California from that base, and they decided that Reading would be a good center point where they could reach most of Northern California and Southern California, southern Oregon, western Nevada from a better point. But they had to build a facility here. So they started in downtown Reading and they would have to drive the equipment out to the airport until they could get something out here permanently. Once we got established here, we covered that area of Cave Junction. And within a, I'm not sure of the time frame, but within the next 10 years, they had closed Cave Junction and made Reading the permanent base to cover all that area.
SPEAKER_03That's very interesting. But you've got 27 years of experience doing this, which in this line of work, I feel like it feels like an enormous amount. In all of those jumps, what's one of the toughest that you've experienced?
SPEAKER_00I have 146 fire jumps, and I probably remember a quarter of them. You remember the really good deals, the really sweet ones, and you remember the really crappy ones. Probably the hardest one I was on was just a 110-degree day, and you hit the ground and putting your pack on. It was like you're sweating before you even when you get in that aircraft and you have all your equipment on, it just superheats you. And then you get to the ground and you take all that stuff off, but then you're out in the elements and just really hot fire. There was no trees, it was just brush, it was super steep. There was just no way to cool your body off, and it was just a miserable day. And the fire was hot. So working in hot conditions next to a hot fire with minimal people and no water is very difficult. And that was probably one of the hardest ones. Like on the verge of feet exhaustion, you just gotta pace yourself, know your body, and know when to take a break.
SPEAKER_02That seems insane. Okay, what was one of the sweetest ones?
SPEAKER_00Oh, one of the sweetest ones. So we support other bases. So my most memorable problem, the fire jump, was in Alaska, and we flew for it's crazy up there. You'll fly for hours and not even see a road. And I don't even know how they knew the spire was there. But we jumped in, and there was an old man that was in a boat. We jumped near a river, we jumped a riverbank, and the only way to get around there is basically by boats because it's tundra, it's hard to walk in, it's super brushy. We jumped in, it was a huge fire. This guy pulls up in a boat and says, Hey, my cabin's about to burn. So he had one boat, there was eight of us, and four of us jumped in the boat. We grabbed a chainsaw, we grabbed a pump and some pump fuel, and he drove us in his boat to his cabin, and it was probably about a 30-minute boat ride. And he dropped us off and went back to grab the rest of the guys. The fire got so hot that he couldn't even drive up the river with the rest of the guys. So we were there basically stranded with a firefront coming at us. We hooked up our pump, we got the chainsaw out, we cut all the trees around the cabin, and we just waited for that fire to come. And it got super windy. And normally the sun doesn't go down up there in the summertime, but we were so far south in the state that the sun was going down. And the fire hit us probably at about, I don't know, midnight, and the sun, it was just starting to get dark there. And we fired up that pump, and that flame front came, and we were able to knock that flame front down and protected that cabin. And it was probably one of the most satisfying fires that I've ever been on, where we got there just in the nick of time. The guy needed help. We had punk to put in the river next to his cabin, and we saved his cabin, and the fire just burned around it. And when he got back up there, it was just the gratefulness that he had that we stuck it out there. Just very satisfying for him and for us, that our mission is critical when there's no other resource that can get to a fire that quickly, that remote, and be able to save somebody's home.
SPEAKER_01Wow, what an experience, mission. Job well done. On that note, how often, whether here locally or like you're saying in other areas, how often are you and the team getting to fires and catching those fires that the public never even hears about? That because of your rapid response, you're able to get to them quickly, extinguish them, or at least get around them before they really turn into something more serious.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's funny the community and my kids at school, they know that I'm a firefighter. And in the summertime, they asked me what fires I was on, and none of them ring a bell. I was like, Yeah, you don't know it. You didn't hear about it. It was a small fire. And yeah, it's just kind of weird. We're firemen, but we're occasionally we're on the big fires that everybody hears about. We go to those as well. But typically our fires are small, no one ever hears about them. We'll jump the Pacific Crest Trail, and hikers will be like, What are you guys doing here? And there'll be a fire that's just putting up a little bit of smoke, and we'll go down there and we'll put it out before it spreads, and no one ever hears about it. And a lot of times people will be within a mile of a fire and not even know about it. They'll see us parachute in and wonder what the heck is going on. And then we'll hike to the fire and put it out and get back to the base and do it again. And people just never really hear about them.
SPEAKER_03And Mitch, what kind of trainings you get if you if I'm going back to your Alaska story, and you showed up, it sounded like the fire was already pretty large and aggressive, and you were hemmed in between a river and the fire front. What kind of training do you get when you're so far out, you're so remote? If the fire is hopefully it's small enough you can put it out and it doesn't become anything more dangerous to you or your team. But what if you are in a situation where the fire is really large and you're hemmed in? What do you do in that situation?
SPEAKER_00Well, every year we do a fire refresher training. We watch lessons learned from fires that have happened in the past and there were close calls or fatalities or injuries. And we have case studies that we refresh on every year, and we try and do different ones every year. We try and put somebody on a fire that has multiple years of experience to help people work through those scenarios. And what we train our folks to do is just get into the fire. So find the coldest spot of the fire. If it's really bad, just get in that spot and ride it out. Otherwise, we hike to a safety zone. And a safety zone is a pre-identified spot that people will go to where if there's a fire and it's ripping, that they'll have an area that they can get into and just ride it out, like a meadow or something like that. But a lot of times those meadows or a clearing could be four, five miles away. And we just call it down and out. You just go downhill and you just work your way away from that fire in the opposite direction that it's moving, and you just work yourself to that safety zone.
SPEAKER_01On that note, too, Mitch, are there certain jumps that you won't take where maybe others feel like, oh, this is a fire that's perfect for the jumpers, and you guys or whoever you report to within the Forest Service say actually it's not, or it's too dangerous, or it's too big. Who makes those decisions and how does that get vetted out?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, our spotters and our jumpers, we'll do a mental risk assessment every time we go to a fire. So we'll look at fire activity, we'll look at where the safety zone is, we'll look at where a jump spot is in relation to the fire. Is it safe to do that? Or do we have a chance to catch the fire? And they may want us to jump it anyways, and we'll do that risk assessment. You know, Blue's tell them now it didn't pass our risk assessment, and then we'll come back and we'll take pictures of it, and we'll give them a phone call and we'll let them know why we were able to do it. But there are some times where you just need people on the fire. Eventually you need somebody on the fire. And even though it might just be eight, ten, fourteen of us, two people, it could be cutting a hell of spot so you can fly more people in. It could be starting an anchor point. Starting an anchor point is like at least getting some lines started. So this fire is gonna spread. And the more of that fire that you can contain earlier on is just gonna decrease the long-term fire spread. And it could be also just we're eyes on it, where no one can see it. There's no lookouts, there's no cameras that can see it. We can give real life intelligence to a dispatch center. We can order helicopters, we can order aircraft, we can set priorities. Or we could say, maybe this isn't a priority, but we'll keep our eyes on it and let you know if something changes.
SPEAKER_03Okay. And then I feel like we hear this a lot, and I don't actually even know where news media, maybe, or just through various channels, that the fire seasons are getting worse and worse. And we've all experienced these bigger fires, these multi-thousand-acre fires that merge. And so the narrative that wildfires are just getting more intense and bigger. Has this changed the nature of smoke jumping at all for you and for your team?
SPEAKER_00Not really. There are some years where we had slow seasons, and it's usually those big fire years where there's uh the heat dome just sits over and there's no lightning, and then it gets windy, and these fires start and they spread really quickly because of the wind and the heat. To me, it seems like our fire seasons are longer, but sometimes it's slow for us, and sometimes it's really busy. Like last year was I think nationally it was a more of a moderate year, but for us it was busier because we had more wet thunderstorms, which that's what smoke jumpers are really used for, is the smaller fires that don't get super big, but you get a lot of ignitions, but we put them out quickly. I've been doing this for a long time. It seems like our fire seasons are going a little bit longer. I don't know if it's global warming. I don't just don't know if it's a trend in the weather patterns year to year. And then people ask me, is it gonna be a bad fire season? I'm telling, I don't know, we'll see. It usually depends on lightning for us. And if there's a lack of lightning, then we're not very busy. But if there's abundant lightning, then we're usually pretty busy.
SPEAKER_01Mitch, if there's one thing that you want people in Reading to understand about smoke jumpers, what is that?
SPEAKER_00So you may not even know we're here, but we are here. We're all the only base in Reading that we're part of the community, and we love it here. We love seeing the community come out and do tours here. We get some cool kids out here and they learn about it. And hopefully someday those kids will come to our organization and be smoke jumpers. And they may not hear a lot about the fires that we jump, but just know that we're out there in the woods protecting those fires, keeping them smaller so they don't reach the communities. We're just part of the whole wildland fire community. Everyone has their job. You got the people that fight the fires in the valleys next to the homes and stuff. You've got people in the construction department, all that that do their things and they help us out. And then you've got us who we help out on these bigger fires in town, but also we specialize in those more remote fires out in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_03Mitch, thank you so much for taking your valuable time to talk to us today. Is there anything else that you want to mention or leave the community with before we wrap up?
SPEAKER_00If people ever want to come by for a tour, they can contact us and we can show them around. It's pretty fascinating. And everyone that usually comes here is, wow, this didn't really know this was here. I think they'd be impressed by the manufacturing that we do. So we build our own jumpsuits, we build our harnesses, we have some very talented people. And we're able to build our own equipment, unlike really any other entity out there in the fire organization, because our there's so few of us, and we have very specific equipment that it there's not a lot of contractors that are willing to do it. And if they did, that would cost them a lot of money. So our manufacturing with our sewing department is pretty impressive.