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Smokejumpers and Hot Shots are dedicated to the same mission: stop the red stuff before it eats up the green stuff, kills the furry stuff, or threatens the human stuff. In clearer words: put the fire out before it destroys the vegetation, kills the animals, or threatens peoples homes, cities, and lives. However, smokejumpers have yet another added task. Before they even touch the ground they are tracking the fire, searching for a good, safe place to jump and concentrating on landing safely. Jumping into a forest that is blazing with a wildfire is a risky task alone.

Photo courtesy of Mike McMillian

Smokejumpers have to find a place to land safely. A field or meadow is usually their first choice but when there isn't one anywhere near the fire they usually have to try to drop down between the trees. They almost always get caught in the trees when this is the case. They also get really scraped up. When they get stuck in the trees they have to get down safely and quickly. The way they do this is with a safety line which is similar to a ladder. The picture on the right shows how they come down out of the trees.

Photo courtesy of Mike McMillian

Once the smokejumpers are safely on the ground they go right to work fighting the fire. Usually their first step is to build a fire break. A fire break is a strip of forest that has been cleared so that there is nothing there for the fire to burn. By doing this the firefighters are hoping that the fire will burn itself out. However, sometimes the fire jumps over the fire break. In this case, the firefighters either have to build another fire break that is wider or, depending on the size of the fire that crossed the break, they will have to put out they fire that jumped the break by throwing dirt on the flames and stopping out flames with their boots. When they think they have the fire out they still turn the dirt over severel times to make sure they got it all the way out. Another thing they might do is start a back fire. That is what the guy on the left is doing. This is risky but when they start backfires, they hope that the two fires will burn towards each other. When they meet they hope they will burn themselves out.

| Fighting - Introduction | | Hot Shots | | Volunteers | | Air Fight |