Smoke Jumping

I had never heard of this, which I found surprising because as a child growing up in the great northwest forests of Idaho, forest fires were a big threat and I spent some time every year I lived there helping my Great Uncle Garth fighting forest fires.

Smoke Jumpers are firefighters who parachute into burning forests and use axes, shovels, and other tools to contain, slow or stop forest fires.

Again from the incredible book "The Power of Impossible Thinking" that I have been reading, Wagner Dodge, a smoke jumper in the disastrous Mann Gulch fire in Montana in 1949, found a brilliant way of saving himself from a fire bearing down on him.

He lit a small circle of fire around himself and let it burn, and when the forest fire got there it just went right around him.  It was not a backfire, which is designed to run up and meet the fire and stop it.  It was one of the first recorded uses of an escape fire designed to create a circle of burnt grass around the firefighter so the fire can rush by him.  Today this is core knowledge of smoke jumpers.  For Wagner Dodge it was intuitive brilliance that saved his life.

I learned as a small boy that fires come in different forms and move in different unpredictable patterns.  Sometimes a forest fire can spread as fast and as swiftly as the wind through the sky.

I was just blown away by more New Ideas, from this book!

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Posted in: Smoke Jumping Fire Fighting Impossible Thinking