Our speaker was Curtis Washington.  He is currently head of transportation for the Strongsville City Schools, however he talked about his time being a smoke jumper.

 

He started working for the Forest Service out of college in Idaho, and along with maintaining trails and other work they would also get called in if there was a forest fire.

 

While there he met some smoke jumpers, who parachute in to fight fires, who encouraged him to apply.  The training for that is pretty rigorous, with the final hike they do being 12 miles with a 150 pound backpack over a mountain.

 

The smoke jumpers can quickly get to a fire by plane, parachuting in.  Their equipment is dropped along with them, and then they have to hike close enough to the fire to fight it.  Their primary method of fighting the fire is by removing fuel ahead of the fire to create a fire break so the fire can't keep spreading.  After the fire is out they make sure there are no more hotspots, and then typically would have to hike back out until they could reach transportation back to their base.