Since the nineteen-forties, smokejumpers have been parachuting into remote parts of the U.S. to contain dangerous blazes.
During summer in parts of Alaska, the sun shines for more than two months straight. The endless days are punctuated by the appearance of gigantic thunderheads that, many afternoons, seem to boil up into the sky. They often bring torrents of rain and bolts of lightning that ignite fires. Fort Wainwright, a U.S. Army facility in Fairbanks, Alaska, houses about two hundred federal wildland firefighters. Roughly seventy-five of them, stationed at a group of unassuming buildings near an airstrip, are known as smokejumpers—firefighters who leap out of airplanes, parachute to the ground, and work to contain blazes in some of the most difficult and remote terrain in the country. Smokejumpers work from nine bases in the Western U.S.; they may fight a fire for a day or for several weeks. When a job is done, they often bushwhack to the nearest road or helicopter landing spot.
In June, on the eve of the summer solstice, there were thirty-four people on the “jump list,” which sets the order in which smokejumpers hustle onto outgoing flights. Their names were written on a whiteboard in “the box”—a central area of desks, computers, and maps that serves as the operational headquarters of the Alaska Smokejumper Base—along with runic notations indicating their roles and qualifications. Much of Alaska’s interior was under a red-flag warning because of high temperatures, dry fuels, and strong winds. Everyone wondered when the “bust,” an explosion of lightning and new ignitions, would arrive. Jesse Olstead, a twenty-nine-year-old with shaggy brown hair, kept stopping by the box to check the jump list. He was No. 18 in line.
Olstead, who grew up in a logging community in Washington State, described smokejumping as “the best-kept secret I’ve ever seen.” He took a job as a firefighter during the summers when he was in college, and he eventually joined the Chena Hotshots, an élite firefighting crew at Fort Wainwright. When some of his friends became smokejumpers, he was intrigued. Smokejumper openings often attract hundreds of applications from experienced firefighters. Olstead submitted one, and he was selected to begin training in the spring of 2024.
In Alaska, it takes rookie smokejumpers five to six weeks to prepare for fire season. Roughly a third of them wash out. On Day One, rookies are given sixty-five minutes to hike three miles while carrying a pack that weighs a hundred and ten pounds. Other bases are said to make rookies run long distances across challenging terrain, or to spend sixteen hours digging firebreaks. “We put you in a bottle and shake you up and see if you’re going to perform,” Evan Burgess, a jumper in his sixth year, told me. Mimi Scissons, who rookied in the eighties, said that she washed out during a three-mile hike with a ninety-pound pack. “I totally broke down mentally,” she told me. She went through a period of heavy drinking before getting sober, trying again, and finally spending twelve seasons as the first Native American woman smokejumper. In some ways, the process echoes what an Army recruit would go through in boot camp. “Making it through that and not having an M16 on your shoulder is pretty sweet,” Nick Biedscheid, who trains rookies in Alaska, said.
Rookies ultimately have to master such challenges as flight dynamics, parachute malfunctions, and landing in dangerous conditions. They complete at least twenty practice jumps of increasing difficulty; the last one requires landing in a half-acre zone surrounded by woods. A rookie who completes training is “beyond reproach,” Wally Wasser, who is known as the all-time Jump King because he parachuted to an unsurpassed three hundred and ninety-five fires, told me. “You would never, ever not trust that person.”
While Alaska’s smokejumpers waited for thunderheads to ignite fires, several of them worked in the loft, an airy room crammed with sewing machines and bolts of fabric on long tables. One was patching a parachute. Others were sewing gear out of black nylon. Outside, on the tarmac, jumpers drove forklifts loaded with cargo—firefighting tools, fuel, provisions—to waiting airplanes. In the box, jumpers gazed up at several large monitors that displayed maps and live weather updates. By 2:16 P.M., lightning had struck more than seven hundred times. Yet the siren that calls smokejumpers to a fire, triggered by a small black button on the wall, had not yet gone off. (The button was decorated with the cover of the Chemical Brothers’ album “Push the Button.”)
When the siren sounds, the jumpers at the top of the list have two minutes to get their gear and start loading onto a “jumpship.” Smokejumpers can reach anywhere in mainland Alaska in less than two hours. Waiting for the siren, Burgess told me, is like a “slow adrenaline drip.” By 3:13 p.m., another five hundred and sixty-four bolts of lightning had struck Alaska, but there was still no siren. Two jumpers were bent over a chessboard. Outside, a pilot sat near a plane, reading a copy of “War and Peace.” A barely perceptible tension built. By 4:41 p.m., the number of lightning strikes across the state had surpassed two thousand, yet the button remained untouched. “All right, we should do it,” Keaton Shepherd, a tall smokejumper with reddish hair and a beard, suddenly said. “We need to make the sacrifice.”
Many smokejumpers worship a god they call Big Ernie. He is a kind of jolly Odin for whom the cardinal sins are entitlement, whining, and bragging. Big Ernie is said to maintain the modesty of his flock by squashing notions of grandiosity; he alone decides who gets a good fire, a bad fire, or no fire at all. The smokejumpers hatched a plan to appeal to Big Ernie’s perverse sense of humor. “If you’re ready, nothing happens, but if you’re unprepared, you’re definitely going out,” Shepherd said. “Somebody go into a pack and randomly take something out.”
Finally, at 7:19 P.M., a ticker displayed a message: “FIRE 232 REQUESTING JUMPERS.” The jumper who was supervising the box that day, Joey Cowen, confirmed the request. Then another jumper walked over to the wall and pushed the button.
The siren let out a deafening wail, and eight jumpers sprinted to nearby racks of gear. They zipped up Kevlar suits and strapped on knee and shin guards. They dipped their arms through parachute harnesses and, laden with a hundred pounds each, rushed through a bay door. Firefighters who weren’t yet being deployed lined the route to the tarmac, hooting and clapping and giving high fives. The jumpers climbed into the belly of a maroon-and-white jumpship as its propellers began to whir and then roar.
Back in the box, Cowen stood in front of the whiteboard and updated the jump list. Big Ernie had apparently been pleased. Shepherd had risen from No. 14 to No. 6.
“Did you take something out of your pack?” Cowen asked Shepherd.
“I did,” Shepherd said. “A tent.”
Cowen grinned. “That’s why we’re going!”
