Can America’s Elite Smokejumping Forces Still Protect a World on Fire?

With its mix of beige-hued, sheet-metal buildings, the Redmond Air Center adheres like an appendage to the small municipal airport in central Oregon. The otherwise crystal blue sky is carpeted with a thin layer of lazy, low-lying clouds whose color matches the distant white-capped volcanoes that make up the nearby Cascades. It’s from this regional airstrip that the Redmond Smokejumpers—one of nine similar bases across the American West—respond to dangerous fires while still in their smoldering infancy. If hotshot crews filled with experienced firefighters serve as the front line between calm and calamity, smokejumpers are the vanguard who extinguish remote fires before they become entrenched. For most months out of the year, these veteran firefighters strap on 100 pounds of gear and fling themselves out of low-flying planes to survey and combat fires across some of the United States’s most rugged wilderness. “Smokejumpers are looked to for leadership on fires,” Pete Lannan, former smokejumper and current national smokejumper program manager, tells Popular Mechanics. “The real strength of the smokejumper program is aggressive initial action in either remote or far–reaching places.” For over 84 years, around 6,200 men and women—whether conscientious objectors, ex-military paratroopers, adventurous college students, firefighting professionals, and even one Apollo astronaut—have served in this exclusive and physically demanding role. And while the job has remained similar throughout the decades, smokejumper crews across the country are adapting to the fiery times of the here and now as the firefighting season slowly lengthens. But on this cool autumn day, things are quiet, and the U.S. Forest Service’s white-and-orange Sherpa C-23B aircraft are asleep in their hangar. Seasonal rains came early this year, signaling the end of the fire season and finally quenching this stretch of the sun-parched West—but the work isn’t done. Instead, the Redmond Smokejumpers are training, repairing, building, and preparing for the fires that eventually will come, as they always have in this fire-prone part of the world. [View in Browser]( [Popular Mechanics]( [SHOP]( [EXCLUSIVE]( [SUBSCRIBE]( [Can America’s Elite Smokejumping Forces Still Protect a World on Fire?]( [Can America’s Elite Smokejumping Forces Still Protect a World on Fire?]( [Can America’s Elite Smokejumping Forces Still Protect a World on Fire?]( With its mix of beige-hued, sheet-metal buildings, the Redmond Air Center adheres like an appendage to the small municipal airport in central Oregon. The otherwise crystal blue sky is carpeted with a thin layer of lazy, low-lying clouds whose color matches the distant white-capped volcanoes that make up the nearby Cascades. It’s from this regional airstrip that the Redmond Smokejumpers—one of nine similar bases across the American West—respond to dangerous fires while still in their smoldering infancy. If hotshot crews filled with experienced firefighters serve as the front line between calm and calamity, smokejumpers are the vanguard who extinguish remote fires before they become entrenched. For most months out of the year, these veteran firefighters strap on 100 pounds of gear and fling themselves out of low-flying planes to survey and combat fires across some of the United States’s most rugged wilderness. “Smokejumpers are looked to for leadership on fires,” Pete Lannan, former smokejumper and current national smokejumper program manager, tells Popular Mechanics. “The real strength of the smokejumper program is aggressive initial action in either remote or far–reaching places.” For over 84 years, around 6,200 men and women—whether conscientious objectors, ex-military paratroopers, adventurous college students, firefighting professionals, and even one Apollo astronaut—have served in this exclusive and physically demanding role. And while the job has remained similar throughout the decades, smokejumper crews across the country are adapting to the fiery times of the here and now as the firefighting season slowly lengthens. But on this cool autumn day, things are quiet, and the U.S. Forest Service’s white-and-orange Sherpa C-23B aircraft are asleep in their hangar. Seasonal rains came early this year, signaling the end of the fire season and finally quenching this stretch of the sun-parched West—but the work isn’t done. Instead, the Redmond Smokejumpers are training, repairing, building, and preparing for the fires that eventually will come, as they always have in this fire-prone part of the world. With its mix of beige-hued, sheet-metal buildings, the Redmond Air Center adheres like an appendage to the small municipal airport in central Oregon. The otherwise crystal blue sky is carpeted with a thin layer of lazy, low-lying clouds whose color matches the distant white-capped volcanoes that make up the nearby Cascades. It’s from this regional airstrip that the Redmond Smokejumpers—one of nine similar bases across the American West—respond to dangerous fires while still in their smoldering infancy. If hotshot crews filled with experienced firefighters serve as the front line between calm and calamity, smokejumpers are the vanguard who extinguish remote fires before they become entrenched. For most months out of the year, these veteran firefighters strap on 100 pounds of gear and fling themselves out of low-flying planes to survey and combat fires across some of the United States’s most rugged wilderness. “Smokejumpers are looked to for leadership on fires,” Pete Lannan, former smokejumper and current national smokejumper program manager, tells Popular Mechanics. “The real strength of the smokejumper program is aggressive initial action in either remote or far–reaching places.” For over 84 years, around 6,200 men and women—whether conscientious objectors, ex-military paratroopers, adventurous college students, firefighting professionals, and even one Apollo astronaut—have served in this exclusive and physically demanding role. And while the job has remained similar throughout the decades, smokejumper crews across the country are adapting to the fiery times of the here and now as the firefighting season slowly lengthens. But on this cool autumn day, things are quiet, and the U.S. Forest Service’s white-and-orange Sherpa C-23B aircraft are asleep in their hangar. Seasonal rains came early this year, signaling the end of the fire season and finally quenching this stretch of the sun-parched West—but the work isn’t done. Instead, the Redmond Smokejumpers are training, repairing, building, and preparing for the fires that eventually will come, as they always have in this fire-prone part of the world. [Read More]( [Read More]( [They Thought It Was an Interstellar Meteorite Strike. Turns Out It Was a Truck.]( [They Thought It Was an Interstellar Meteorite Strike. Turns Out It Was a Truck.]( ...whoops? 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