Ed: Thanks for sending the article, Tim
On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 8:54 AM, edward nizalowski < [email protected]> wrote: > I saw this in the latest issue of Time magazine: > > * * > > *Earl Cooley; smoke jumper helped pioneer risky firefighting technique* > > > > WASHINGTON - Earl Cooley, 98, who was one of the first two US Forest > Service smoke jumpers to parachute into a forest fire and later was a > spotter on the Mann Gulch fire that killed 13 firefighters, died Nov. 9 at > his home in Missoula, Mont., of pneumonia. > > As a 23-year-old outdoorsman who had built logging roads, lookout towers, > and a home for his mother, Mr. Cooley was as well-prepared as anyone, which > is to say hardly prepared at all, for the task of jumping from a > propeller-driven plane into a lightning-triggered fire in Idaho’s Nez Perce > forest July 12, 1940. The first man out the plane’s door was Rufus Robinson, > followed closely by Mr. Cooley. > > The wind was blowing so hard that afternoon that Cooley’s load lines > twisted up behind his neck. As he bent to look at the emergency chute, the > lines unwound. He was nearly in a freefall, and as he drew closer to Earth, > he clipped the limbs off a big spruce tree. He landed without injury, as did > Robinson, and the pair squelched the fire by 10 a.m. the next day, then > hiked 28 miles to the nearest ranger station. > > That was the start of the Forest Service’s storied corps of smoke jumpers > who even today jump in hazardous, remote areas to quickly control fires that > ground-based crews cannot reach. The idea of smoke jumping had first been > proposed in 1934 and was tried in Russia in that decade, but the act of > dropping men into a wildfire with little more than shovels and pickaxes was > considered something between experimental and insane. > > On the flight in the 1940 Nez Perce fire, the man whose job was to shove > supplies out after the smoke jumpers almost fell to his death. Merle > Lundrigan’s legs got tangled in ropes, and he was pulled out the plane’s > door, barely hanging on to the doorstep. The pilot immediately banked, which > tossed Lundrigan back aboard. From then on, cargo kickers had to wear > parachutes. > > “We didn’t know what we were doing,’’ Mr. Cooley told the Associated Press > in 2000. > > His own training was rudimentary; the trainer had hung a parachute in a > tree to point out the harness, shroud lines, and release handles, then said: > “Tomorrow, we jump.’’ Still, Mr. Cooley said, the only bad part of smoke > jumping was the walk home. > > Mr. Cooley went on to make 48 more jumps. He was aboard the C-47 plane in > 1949 from which a dozen smoke jumpers leaped into the Mann Gulch fire near > Helena, Mont. > > Mr. Cooley was the spotter, the man who found the landing site and tapped > each jumper on the left calf to alert him it was time to go. The > firefighters landed safely, the additional equipment fell to the ground, so > Mr. Cooley and the plane went back to base. But the fire “blew up’’ and > overran the men in what became the Forest Service’s biggest tragedy until > the 1994 South Canyon Fire in Colorado. > > “Earl lived a very long time, and he was acutely aware of his place in the > history of smoke jumping,’’ said John Maclean, author of three books on > wildland fires, including one on the South Canyon Fire, and the son of > Norman Maclean, who wrote on the Mann Gulch incident. > > John MacLean called Mr. Cooley’s book about the early days of the Forest > Service, “Trimotor and Trail: Pioneer Smokejumpers’’ (1984), “the most > authoritative book from the inside about that period.’’ > > Mr. Cooley retired from the Forest Service in 1975. He had been a district > ranger and superintendent of the smoke jumper base in Missoula, as well as > regional equipment specialist.[image: > http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/File-Based_Image_Resource/dingbat_story_end_icon.gif] > > Ed Nizalowski > > Newark Valley, NY > > > > > > > > -- > Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org > Send email to [email protected] > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en > To unsubscribe send email to > [email protected]<entstrees%[email protected]> > -- Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected]
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